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LITERARY  AND  SCIENT1 FIG 
CIRCLE 


LITERARY  LEADERS 
OF  MODERN  ENGLAND 


WILLIAM  J.  DAWSON 


f 


LIBRARY 

(UNIVERSITY  OF 
,    CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DI£GO 


presented  to  the 

LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  •  SAN  DIEGO 

by 
FRIENDS  OF  THE  LIBRARY 

Mrs.    Edwin  W.   Meise 

donor 


Literary  Leaders  of 
Modern  England 


BY 


W.  J.   DAWSON 


SELECTED  CHAPTERS  FROM   "THE  MAKERS  OF  MODERN 

POETRY,"  AND  "THE  MAKERS  OF  MODERN  PROSE," 

BY    PERMISSION    OF    THE    PUBLISHER, 

THOS.  WHITTAKER,  NEW  YORK 


NEW  YORK          CHAUTAUQUA         SPRINGFIELD 

Cfje  <Ef)autau(ju 

MCMII 


The  Lakeside  Press,  Chicago,  III.,  U.  S.  A. 
R.  R.  Donnelley  &  Sons  Company. 


CONTENTS 


i. 
ii. 

in. 

IV. 

v. 

VI. 
VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XL 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH 

THE  CONNECTION  BETWEEN  WORDSWORTH'S 
LIFE  AND  His  POETRY 

WORDSWORTH'S  VIEW  OF  NATURE  AND  MAN 

WORDSWORTH'S  PATRIOTIC  AND  POLITICAL 
POEMS 

WORDSWORTH'S  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH — CONCLUDING  SUR- 
VEY 

LORD  TENNYSON— GENERAL  CHARACTERIS- 
TICS - 

TENNYSON'S  TREATMENT  OF  NATURE 

TENNYSON— LOVE  AND  WOMAN 

TENNYSON'S  VIEW  OF  LIFE  AND  SOCIETY 

IDYLLS  AND  THE  "IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  " 

TENNYSON'S  "!N  MEMORIAM" 

ROBERT  BROWNING 

BROWNING'S  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  BROWNING'S  RELIGION 

BROWNING'S  ATTITUDE  TO  CHRISTIANITY — 
CONCLUDING  SURVEY 

THOMAS  CARLYLE 

CARLYLE'S  TEACHING 

JOHN  RUSKIN 

THE  TEACHING  OF  RUSKIN 

RUSKIN'S  IDEAL  OF  WOMEN 


PAGE 

i 

10 
19 

30 
42 


61 

70 

82 

96 

108 

119 

143 

153 

163 

173 
189 
207 
218 
228 
240 


SELECTIONS  FROM  WORDSWORTH,  TENNYSON,  BROWN- 
ING, CARLYLE,  AND  RUSKIN  -    251-274 


PREFACE 

The  following  essays,  dealing  with  five  great  liter- 
ary leaders  of  modern  England,  are  taken  from  the 
two  volumes  by  Dr.  William  J.  Dawson,  entitled, 
"The  Makers  of  Modern  Poetry"  and  "The  Makers 
of  Modern  Prose."  A  few  typical  selections  from 
each  writer  ,are  added.  These  are  intended  to  sup- 
plement the  quotations  in  the  text,  and  it  is  hoped 
that  they  will  lead  the  reader  to  extend  still  further 
his  acquaintance  with  the  works  of  the  authors. 


LITERARY   LEADERS  OF 
MODERN    ENGLAND 


CHAPTER   I 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH 

Born  at  Cockermouth,  April  7,  1770.  Poems  first  published 
1798.  Became  Poet  Laureate  1843.  Died  at  Rydal  Mount, 
April  23,  1850. 

In  many  respects,  and  those  the  most  essential,  the 
influence  of  William  Wordsworth  is  the  most  powerful 
and  abiding  poetic  influence  of  the  Victorian  period. 
During  his  lifetime  his  fame  was  comparatively  restricted, 
and  during  the  greater  part  of  his  career  his  very  claim  to 
be  a  poet  was  eagerly  disputed,  and  widely  and  vehemently 
denied.  Lord  Jeffrey's  verdict  that  he  was  a  driveling 
idiot,  and  wouldn't  do,  has  become  historical,  and  is  a 
memorable  example  of  the  ineptitude  and  virulence  of  that 
criticism  which  prevailed  in  the  palmy  days  of  the  Edin- 
burgh Review.  By  a  curious  chastisement  of  fate,  the 
ancient  criticism  is  chiefly  remembered  to-day  by  its  con- 
temptuous hostility  to  Byron,  its  brutal  attack  on  Keats, 
and  its  undiscerning  violence  of  hatred  for  Wordsworth. 
Sydney  Smith  said  he  wou'd  be  glad  to  be  as  sure  of  any- 
thing as  Macaulay  was  of  everything,  and  the  dogmatical 
criticism  of  Macaulay  was  typical  of  the  criticism  of  the 
time.  It  possessed  neither  justice  nor  urbanity;  its  weap- 


2         Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

ons  were  the  bludgeon  and  the  tomahawk;  and  it  knew  no 
mean  between  extravagant  laudation  and  merciless  abuse. 
Some  one  has  spoken  of  Macaulay  as  "stamping"  through 
the  fields  of  literature,  and  the  phrase  admirably  pictures 
the  energetic  Philistinism  of  the  critical  dogmatist.  It 
was  in  this  spirit  that  England  first  received  the  poetry 
of  a  man  who  has  been,  and  is,  one  of  the  noblest  voices 
in  the  literary  life  of  the  century.  The  critics  simply 
"stamped"  upon  his  writings;  and  not  merely  howled 
derision  on  them,  but  taught  his  countrymen  everywhere 
to  receive  his  name  with  guffaws  of  brutal  ridicule. 

In  considering  the  works  and  influence  of  Wordsworth, 
we  are  bound  to  take  full  cognizance  of  the  peculiarities 
of  his  own  character  and  the  events  of  his  own  life. 
With  all  poets  it  is  necessary  to  do  this,  but  with  Words- 
worth most  of  all,  because  everything  he  has  written  is 
deeply  colored  with  his  own  individuality.  He  has  writ- 
ten little  that  is  impersonal;  across  almost  every  page 
there  is  projected  the  huge  shadow  of  his  own  peculiar 
personality.  While  other  poets  have  gone  to  history  or 
mythology  for  their  themes,  Wordsworth  found  his  within 
himself,  or  in  the  simple  surroundings  of  one  of  the  sim- 
plest and  most  uneventful  of  lives.  He  brooded  over  the 
"abysmal  deeps  of  personality,"  and  from  them  he  drew 
the  inspiration  of  his  noblest  poetry.  Sometimes  this 
superb  egotism  of  Wordsworth  is  irritating,  and  often  he 
becomes  tedious  by  attaching  enormous  importance  to  the 
very  slightest  influences  which  have  helped  to  form  his 
mind,  or  the  most  trivial  incidents  which  have  composed 
its  record.  "The  Prelude,"  which  is  one  of  his  longest 
poems,  simply  describes  the  growth  of  an  individual  mind, 
and,  among  many  passages  of  profound  thought  and 


William  Wordsworth  3 

beauty,  contains  others  that  are  both  tedious  and  trivial, 
and  are  tedious  because  they  are  trivial.  It  is  because 
Wordsworth  always  found  the  impulse  of  poetry  within 
himself  that  it  is  impossible  to  understand  his  writings 
without  a  clear  understanding  of  the  significance  of  his 
life.  He  boldly  declared  that  he  must  be  taken  as  a 
teacher  or  as  nothing.  He  was  no  fitful  singer  of  an  idle 
day;  he  believed  he  had  a  message  to  deliver,  as  truly  as 
ever  ancient  seer  or  prophet  had.  For  this  reason  Words- 
worth fulfills,  more  perfectly  than  any  other  modern  poet, 
the  ideal  conception  of  the  bard.  According  to  some 
philologists,  "minister"  and  "minstrel"  spring  from  the 
same  root,  and  convey  the  same  idea.  The  true  poet  is 
the  bard,  the  seer,  the  minister;  he  has  a  divine  ordina- 
tion and  is  sacred  by  a  divine  anointing;  he  is  a 
consecrated  spirit,  selected  and  commissioned  for  the 
performance  of  a  divine  behest.  This  was  Wordsworth's 
view  of  the  function  of  the  poet,  and  he  endeavored  to 
fulfill  it.  This  is  what  he  meant  when  he  said  that  vows 
were  made  for  him,  and  that  he  must  be  considered  as  a 
teacher  or  nothing.  This  is  the  secret  of  that  prophetic 
force  which  throbs  in  his  best  verses,  and  which  gives 
them  a  subtle  and  enduring  charm.  They  are  the  expres- 
sion of  an  austere  and  separated  soul,  of  a  spirit  which 
dwells  amid  inaccessible  heights  of  devout  vision,  and 
speaks  with  the  accent  of  one  who  knows  the  peace  of 
lofty  and  satisfying  purposes. 

This  claim  of  Wordsworth's — to  be  considered  as  a 
teacher  or  as  nothing — was  a  new  claim  to  the  critics  of 
fifty  years  ago,  and  was  undoubtedly  one  cause,  and  per- 
haps the  main  cause,  of  their  prolonged  and  bitter  hostility. 
We  shall  see  hereafter  precisely  what  Wordsworth  meant 


4         Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

by  the  claim  and  how  he  has  built  up  a  philosophy  which 
is  its  justification.  But  in  the  first  instance  the  claim 
was  based  almost  as  much  upon  the  literary  form  of  his 
work  as  on  its  philosophic  qualities  and  upon  a  theory  of 
literary  composition  which  he  himself  has  stated  and  devel- 
oped in  his  prefaces  with  great  fullness.  What  was  that 
theory?  Briefly  put,  it  amounted  to  this:  Wordsworth 
complained  that  the  commonly  accepted  theory  of  poetry 
was  both  false  and  vicious.  It  had  practically  invented  a 
dialect  of  its  own,  which  was  as  far  as  possible  removed 
from  the  ordinary  dialect  of  the  common  people.  It  was 
artificial  and  stilted — the  cant  of  a  coterie,  and  not  the 
language  of  ordinary  life.  Its  spirit  also  was  wholly 
wrong  and  mistaken:  it  had  lost  hold  on  common  life,  and 
scorned  it  as  low  and  mean;  it  had  lost  hold  on  nature, 
because  it  did  not  know  how  to  speak  of  her  except  in 
ancient  rhetorical  phrases,  which  were  the  bronze  coinage 
of  poetry,  defaced  by  use,  and  whatever  might  once  have 
been  true  or  just  about  them  was  now  depraved  and  muti- 
lated by  unthinking  use.  Wordsworth  held  that  there  was 
sufficient  interest  in  common  life  to  inspire  the  noblest 
achievements  of  the  poet,  and  that  nature  must  be  observed 
with  unflinching  fidelity  if  she  was  to  be  described  with 
truth  or  freshness.  He  asks  why  should  poetry  be 

A  history  only  of  departed  things, 

Or  a  mere  fiction  of  what  never  was  ? 

For  the  discerning  intellect  of  Man, 

When  wedded  to  this  goodly  universe 

In  love  and  holy  passion,  shall  find  these 

A  simple  produce  of  the  common  day. 

1,  long  before  the  blissful  hour  arrives, 

Would  chant,  in  lonely  peace,  the  spousal  hour 

Of  this  great  consummation  ;  and,  by  words 


William  Wordsworth  5 

Which  speak  of  nothing  more  than  what  we  are, 
Would  I  arouse  the  sensual  from  their  sleep 
Of  Death,  and  win  the  vacant  and  the  vain 
To  noble  raptures  ;  while  my  voice  proclaims 
How  exquisitely  the  individual  mind 
(And  the  progressive  powers  perhaps  no  less 
Of  the  whole  species)  to  the  external  world 
Is  fitted  ; — and  how  exquisitely  too — 
Theme  this  but  little  heard  of  among  men— 
The  external  world  is  fitted  to  the  mind. 

In  this  noble  passage  from  the  "Recluse,"  the  gist  of 
Wordsworth's  peculiar  view  of  poetry  is  to  be  found.  He 
announces  a  return  to  simplicity,  to  simple  themes  and 
simple  language,  and  teaches  that  in  the  simplest  sights  of 
life  and  nature  there  is  sufficient  inspiration  for  the  true 
poet.  He  speaks  of  nothing  more  than  what  we  are,  and 
is  prepared  to  write  nothing  that  is  not  justified  by  the 
actual  truth  of  things.  He  sets  himself  against  that 
species  of  poetry  which  finds  its  impulse  and  its  public  in 
theatrical  passion  and  morbid  or  exaggerated  sentiment. 
To  him  the  "meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give  thoughts 
that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears,"  and  by  preserving 
his  soul  in  austere  simplicity  he  aims  at  producing  a 
species  of  poetry  which  will  affect  men  by  its  truth  rather 
than  its  passion,  and  will  affect  even  the  lowliest  of  men, 
because  it  is  expressed  in  the  plain  and  unadorned  language 
of  common  life. 

How  truly  Wordsworth  adhered  to  the  great  principles 
here  enunciated  his  life  and  work  declare,  but  it  will  also 
be  apparent  that  his  theory  of  poetic  expression  hopelessly 
broke  down  after  a  short  trial.  It  may  be  said,  indeed, 
that  occasionally  even  his  theory  of  poetry  itself  breaks 
down.  In  the  attempt  to  be  simple  he  becomes  childish, 


6         Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

and  in  his  selection  of  the  commonest  themes  he  more 
than  once  has  selected  themes  which  no  human  genius 
could  make  poetic.  In  the  main,  however,  the  principles 
of  thought  which  he  enunciated  he  strictly  observed 
throughout  a  long  life,  and  his  noblest  effects  have  been 
produced  within  the  limitations  he  invented,  and  which  he 
was  content  to  obey.  But  when  we  consider  the  ques- 
tion of  his  literary  expression,  we  at  once  perceive  that  he 
does  not  use  the  language  of  common  life,  nor  was  it  pos- 
sible that  he  should.  The  vocabulary  of  the  educated 
man  is  far  wider  than  the  vocabulary  of  the  illiterate,  and 
the  vocabulary  of  the  great  poet  is  usually  the  fullest  of 
all.  Wordsworth  simply  could  not  help  himself  when  he 
used  forms  of  expression  which  the  ploughman  and  peddler 
could  never  have  used.  It  was  in  vain  that  he  said:  "I 
have  proposed  to  myself  to  imitate,  and  as  far  as  is  pos- 
sible to  adopt,  the  very  language  of  men.  I  have  taken 
as  much  pains  to  avoid  what  is  usually  called  poetic  diction 
as  others  ordinarily  take  to  produce  it."  In  poems  like 
"The  Idiot  Boy,"  or  "The  Thorn,"  he  certainly  fulfills 
this  purpose;  he  has  so  entirely  succeeded  in  avoiding 
poetic  diction  that  he  has  produced  verses  which  by  no 
stretch  of  literary  charity  could  be  called  poetry  at  all. 
Wordsworth's  noblest  poetry  is  noble  in  direct  contra- 
vention of  his  own  theory  of  poetry,  and  is  a  pertinent 
illustration  of  the  futility  of  all  such  theories  to  bind  men 
of  real  genius.  His  theory  is,  that  true  poetry  should  be 
merely  "the  language  really  spoken  by  men,  with  meter 
superadded,"  and  he  asks  us,  "What  other  distinction 
from  prose  would  we  have  ? ' '  We  reply  that  from  the 
true  poet  we  expect  melody  and  magic  of  phrase — the  gift 
of  musical  expression  which  can  make  words  a  power 


William  Wordsworth  7 

equal  to  music,  in  producing  exquisite  sensations  on  the 
ear,  and  which  is  a  still  higher  power  than  music,  because 
it  can  directly  produce  noble  thoughts  and  passions  in  the 
soul.  If  Wordsworth  had  only  given  us  the  language  of 
prose  with  meter  superadded,  we  should  not  be  reading 
his  pages  to-day  with  ever- fresh  delight.  It  is  because 
he  discards  his  own  theory  of  poetic  expression,  and  has 
given  us  many  verses  written  in  language  unmatched  for 
purity  and  melody  of  phrase,  and  wholly  different  from 
the  "language  really  spoken  by  men,"  that  we  have  judged 
him  a  great  poet. 

When  we  consider  the  vehemence  of  that  ridicule  with 
which  Wordsworth  was  greeted,  and  the  virulence  of  that 
criticism  with  which  he  was  pursued  for  nearly  half  a 
century,  it  is  necessary,  therefore,  to  bear  in  mind  how 
absurd  this  theory  of  poetic  expression  is,  and  how  doubly 
absurd  it  must  have  seemed  to  those  who  were  the  critical 
authorities  of  his  day.  And  it  must  also  be  recollected 
that  Wordsworth  pressed  his  theory  in  season  and  out  of 
season.  The  temper  of  mind  which  made  him  attach  an 
overweening  importance  to  the  slightest  incidents  in  his 
own  intellectual  development  made  him  also  blind  to  the 
relative  values  of  his  poems.  He  deliberately  chose  poems 
like  "The  Idiot  Boy" — which  were  written  in  his  worst 
style — and  solemnly  insisted  on  their  significance  as  illus- 
trative of  his  theory.  If  he  had  had  any  sense  of  humor, 
he  would  have  perceived  how  absurd  this  was;  but  in 
humor  Wordsworth  was  singularly  deficient.  There  was 
a  stiffness  of  controversial  temper  about  him  which  refused 
any  parley  with  the  enemy.  The  consequence  was,  that 
the  more  strenuously  Wordsworth  insisted  on  the  value  of 
his  worst  poems,  the  more  blind  men  became  to  the 


8         Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

supreme  excellence  of  his  best.  They  accepted  his  worst 
poems  as  typical  of  his  genius,  and  it  was  easy  to  turn 
them  into  ridicule.  If  poetry  were,  indeed,  only  prose 
with  meter  superadded,  it  was  obvious  that  any  prose-man 
could  become  a  poet  at  will;  and  the  facile  retort  rose  to 
the  lips  that  Wordsworth  had  justified  his  theory  by  writ- 
ing prose  under  the  delusion  that  it  was  poetry.  The 
astonishing  thing  is,  that  men  of  genuine  critical  ability 
were  so  slow  to  recognize  that  among  many  poems  which 
were  little  better  than  prose  cut  up  into  metrical  lengths, 
there  were  other  poems  of  great  and  enduring  excellence, 
which  the  greatest  poets  of  all  time  might  be  proud  to 
claim.  However,  a  truce  has  long  since  been  called  to 
such  contentions.  No  one  cares  much  to-day  what  par- 
ticular poetic  fads  Wordsworth  may  have  advocated;  the 
fact  that  has  gradually  grown  clear  and  clearer  to  the 
world  is,  that  in  Wordsworth  we  possess  a  poet  of  pro- 
found originality  and  of  supreme  genius,  and  his  greatness 
is  generally  recognized.  It  is  also  generally  recognized 
that,  more  than  any  other  modern  poet,  Wordsworth  has 
expressed  in  his  poems  a  noble  philosophy;  and  it  is  to 
the  study  of  that  philosophy  that  I  invite  those  who  would 
read  Wordsworth  with  a  seeing  eye  and  an  understanding 
heart. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  How  was  the  poetry  of   Wordsworth  received  by  the 
critics  of  his  day? 

2.  Why  is  it  very  necessary  to  study  Wordsworth's  life  in 
connection  with  his  poetry? 

3.  What  was  Wordsworth's  idea  of  the  function  of  a  poet? 

4.  What  fault  did  he  find  with  much  of  the  poetry  of  his 
time? 


William  Wordsworth  9 

5.  What  were  his  theories  as  to  what  poetry  should  be? 

6.  How  did  he  fall  short  of  his  own  theory  of  poetic  expres- 
sion? 

7.  How  does  this  explain  in  some  measure  the  views  of  his 
critics? 

8.  What  important  qualities  of  his  work  did  many  of  his 
critics  fail  to  see? 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ward's  English  Poets.  Vol.  IV.  Essay  by  R.  W.  Church, 
and  Selections. 

The  Poets  and  the  Poetry  of  the  Century.  A.  H.  Miles. 
Vol.  I. 

Wordsworth.  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  (English  Men  of  Letters 
Series.) 

Wordsworthiana.  Papers  read  to  the  Wordsworth  Society. 
Edited  by  Wm.  Knight. 

Poems  of  Wordsworth.  Chosen  and  selected,  with  intro- 
ductory essay,  by  Matthew  Arnold.  (Golden  Treasury  Series.) 

Wordsworth's  Complete  Poetical  Works.  \  Vol.  Edited 
by  John  Morley. 

William  Wordsworth.  A  biographical  sketch,  with  selec- 
tions from  his  writings.  A.  J.  Symington. 

Wordsworth's  Poetry.  Francis  Jeffrey.  (Contributions  to 
the  Edinburgh  Review,  1807-1814.  These  are  the  most  famous 
of  the  early  attacks  on  Wordsworth.) 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  CONNECTION   BETWEEN  WORDS- 
WORTH'S LIFE  AND  HIS  POETRY 

I  have  already  said  that  with  Wordsworth,  more  than 
with  most  poets,  the  life  of  the  poet  must  be  considered 
in  connection  with  his  poetry.  Let  us  now  look  at  this 
subject  a  little  more  closely.  Wordsworth  was  born  on 
the  borders  of  that  Lake  Country  which  he  loved  so  well, 
at  Cockermouth,  on  April  7,  1770.  From  his  boyhood 
he  was  familiar  with  English  mountain  scenery,  and  the 
subduing  spirit  of  its  beauty  touched  his  earliest  life.  He 
himself  tells  us — 

Nothing  at  that  time 
So  welcome,  no  temptation  half  so  dear 
As  that  which  urged  me  to  a  daring  feat. 
Deep  pools,  tall  trees,  black  chasms  and  dizzy  crags, 
And  tottering  towers  :  I  loved  to  stand  and  read 
Their  looks  forbidding,  read  and  disobey. 

It  is  a  vivid  picture  of  the  wild  child  of  Nature,  awed  and 
yet  exhilarated  in  her  presence,  which  Wordsworth  paints 
in  these  lines.  The  boyish  Wordsworth  described  in  the 
"Recluse"  is  a  true  boy,  touched  more  perhaps  than  a 
boy  should  be  with  a  sense  of  mystery  in  nature,  but  not 
distinguished  by  any  unwholesome  precocity  or  unnatural 
meditativeness.  The  awe  of  nature  seems  to  have  been  a 
feeling  early  developed  in  him,  and  it  never  left  him.  He 
tells  us  how  one  day  while  nutting  he  penetrated  into  a 


Wordsworth's  Life  and  His  Poetry         1 1 

distant  solitude  of  the  wood,  where  the  silence  and  sense 
of  sacredness  were  so  profound  that  he  hastily  retreated, 
with  the  feeling  that  he  had  invaded  a  sanctuary.  But  in 
other  passages,  such  as  the  above,  the  idea  left  upon  the 
mind  is  of  a  sturdy  youth,  rejoicing  in  his  strength  of  limb 
and  sureness  of  foot,  and  taking  a  thoroughly  healthy 
delight  in  outdoor  life.  He  has  the  wholesome  blood  of 
the  Cumberland  dalesman  in  his  veins,  and  loves  the  moun- 
tains as  only  those  love  them  whose  life  has  thriven  beneath 
their  shadows ;  and  even  as  a  boy  he  learned  to  feel  some- 
thing of  that  healing  serenity  which  Nature  breathes  into 
the  soul  that  loves  her.  He  felt  that  "whatever  of  high- 
est he  can  hope,  it  is 'hers  to  promise;  all  that  is  dark  in 
him  she  must  purge  into  purity;  all  that  is  failing  in  him 
she  must  strengthen  into  truth;  in  her,  through  all  the 
world's  warfare,  he  must  find  his  peace";  or,  to  quote  his 
own  memorable  words: 

But  me  hath  Nature  tamed,  and  bade  to  seek 
For  other  agitations,  or  be  calm  ; 
Hath  dealt  with  me  as  with  a  turbulent  stream, 
Some  nursling  of  the  mountains,  which  she  leads 
Through  quiet  meadows,  after  he  has  learnt 
His  strength,  and  had  his  triumph  and  his  joy, 
His  desperate  course  of  tumult  and  of  glee. 

The  first  noticeable  thing,  therefore,  is  that  Words- 
worth was  a  true  "nursling  of  the  mountains,"  and  the 
influence  of  natural  beauty  and  pastoral  life  was  one  of 
the  earliest  influences  which  shaped  his  mind.  He  had 
no  love  of  cities,  and  knew  little  of  them.  When  he  spoke 
of  them  it  was  with  reluctance  and  compassion;  he 
brooded 


12,       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Above  the  fierce  confederate  storm 
Of  sorrow,  barricadoed  ever  more 
Within  the  walls  of  cities; 

for  it  seemed  to  him  that  cities  were  the  natural  homes  of 
sorrow,  and  the  open  fields  the  true  abodes  of  peace.  He 
had  a  passionate  love  for  an  outdoor  life,  and  his  mind 
naturally  lent  itself  to  that  deep  meditativeness  which  is  a 
common  characteristic  of  those  who  spend  many  hours  of 
every  day  in  the  loneliness  of  nature.  Strangely  enough, 
in  one  who  is  known  to  fame  as  a  man  of  letters,  it  was 
nevertheless  true  that  the  three  things  most  difficult  for 
him  to  do,  to  the  very  end  of  his  life,  were  reading,  writ- 
ing, and  the  toil  of  literary  composition.  When  he  is  a 
young  man  of  thirty-three,  he  writes  to  Sir  George  Beau- 
mont that  he  never  has  a  pen  in  his  hand  for  five  minutes 
without  becoming  a  bundle  of  uneasiness,  and  experiencing 
an  insufferable  oppression.  "Nine-tenths  of  my  verses," 
he  writes  forty  years  later,  "have  been  murmured  out  in 
the  open  air."  When  a  visitor  at  Rydal  Mount  asked  to 
see  Wordsworth's  study,  the  reply  was  that  he  could  see 
his  "library,  where  he  keeps  his  books,  but  his  study  is 
out  of  doors."  The  peculiarities  thus  described  are  the 
typical  peculiarities  of  the  sturdy  dalesman,  and  such  in 
many  respects  Wordsworth  was  to  the  end  of  his  days. 
When  he  described  the  peasants  and  farmers  of  the  moun- 
tains, it  was  no  fanciful  love  that  attracted  him  to  them: 
he  spoke  of  men  whom  he  thoroughly  understood,  because 
he  was  physically  akin  to  them.  The  sturdy  fiber  of  his 
mind,  his  intellectual  honesty,  his  independence,  his  power 
of  contemplation,  his  sufficiency — not  the  coarse  sufficiency 
of  the  vulgar  egoist,  but  the  habitual  sufficiency  of  a  well- 
poised  and  self-reliant  nature — all  these  were  the  distin- 


Wordsworth's  Life  and  His  Poetry         13 

guishing  characteristics  of  his  neighbors,  but  touched  in 
him  with  a  loftier  spirit,  and  put  to  higher  purposes. 
Even  in  his  face  and  figure — in  the  ruggedness  of  the  one 
and  the  firmness  and  sturdiness  of  the  other — much  of  this 
was  discernible.  It  was  a  figure  that  showed  worst  in 
drawing-rooms,  as  though  consciously  alien  to  them;  a 
face  that  seemed  almost  vacant  to  the  nimble-minded 
dwellers  in  cities,  but  which  glowed  with  true  illumination 
and  nobility  among  the  sounds  and  visions  of  his  native 
country-side.  The  mold  in  which  Wordsworth  was  cast 
was  a  strong  one.  His  nature  was  slow,  and  deep,  and 
steadfast;  what  he  was  at  thirty  he  practically  was  at 
seventy,  save  that  there  had  been  an  inevitable  stiffening 
of  ideas,  and  an  equally  inevitable  growth  of  self-reliant 
sufficiency. 

Let  any  one  try  to  picture  to  himself  the  leading  char- 
acteristics of  the  life  of  a  Cumbrian  dalesman,  and,  if  he 
pleases,  let  him  go  to  the  poems  of  Wordsworth  himself 
for  materials,  and  he  will  find  that  the  life  so  outlined  will 
be,  above  all  things,  independent,  self-respecting,  and  self- 
sufficient,  frugal  without  parsimony,  pious  without  formal- 
ity, and  simple  without  boorishness.  It  is  a  wholesome 
life  of  humble  industries  and  simple  pleasures,  and  such  a 
life  was  not  merely  to  Wordsworth  the  ideal  life,  but  it 
was  an  ideal  which  he  himself  perfectly  fulfilled.  And 
let  any  one  think  again  of  the  sort  of  life  which  found 
favor  with  the  poets  of  his  day,  and  the  sort  of  life  they 
themselves  lived — Byron  with  his  bitter  misanthropy, 
Shelley  with  his  outraged  sensitiveness,  Keats  with  his 
recoil  from  a  sordid  world  to  the  ideal  paradise  of  Greek 
mythology,  Moore  with  his  cockney  glitter,  Coleridge  with 
his  remote  and  visionary  splendor — let  him  think  of  this, 


14       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

and  he  will  see  how  strange  a  thing  it  was  to  such  a  world 
that  a  Cumbrian  dalesman's  life  should  have  been  thrust 
before  it  as  an  ideal  human  life,  and  that,  too,  by  a  man 
who  had  himself  chosen  such  a  life  for  himself,  and  had 
found  in  it  tranquillity  and  satisfaction.  In  that  age  there 
were  only  two  poets  who  had  shown  any  genuine  love  of 
Nature  in  her  daily  and  common  manifestations,  and  had 
written  verses  which  might  have  "been  murmured  out  in 
the  open  air."  These  were  Burns  and  Scott,  and  it  is 
noticeable  that  for  both  Wordsworth  felt  a  deep  attraction. 
In  both  there  is  a  supreme  healthfulness,  a  sense  of  robust 
enjoyment  in  fresh  air  and  simple  sights.  When  Scott 
describes  nature  it  is  always  with  a  true  eye  for  color,  and 
Burns 's  poems  touch  us  by  their  artless  rusticity  not  less 
than  by  their  artistic  beauty.  Wordsworth  himself  has 
told  us  how  "admirably  has  Burns  given  way  to  these 
impulses  of  nature,  both  with  reference  to  himself  and  in 
describing  the  condition  of  others";  and  it  was  the  simple 
humanness  of  the  Ayrshire  farmer  that  endeared  him  to  a 
poet  who  valued  more  than  anything  else  simplicity  and 
virtue  in  human  nature.  But  where  Wordsworth  differed 
from  all  other  poets  of  his  day  was  that  he  had  a  conscious 
ideal  of  what  human  life  might  be  made,  through  simplicity 
of  desire  and  communion  with  nature,  and  he  resolutely 
set  himself  to  the  fulfillment  of  his  ideal.  Especially  was 
the  dalesman's  independence  and  self-sufficiency  marked 
in  him.  He  knew  what  it  was  to  be  a  law  unto  himself, 
and  found  in  his  own  nature  the  true  impulses  of  action. 
And  so  he  writes:  "These  two  things,  contradictory  as 
they  seem,  must  go  together — manly  dependence  and  manly 
independence,  manly  reliance  and  manly  self-reliance." 
And  again:  "Let  the  poet  first  consult  his  own  heart,  as 


Wordsworth's  Life  and  His  Poetry         15 

I  have  done,  and  leave  the  rest  to  posterity — to,  I  hope, 
an  improving  posterity.  I  have  not  .written  down  to  the 
level  of  superficial  observers  or  unthinking  minds."  The 
spirit  of  these  words  reveals  the  man,  and  the  man  so 
revealed  could  only  have  thriven  in  a  region  where  sim- 
plicity, and  manliness,  and  rugged  honesty  were  the  prime 
virtues  and  common  heritage  of  daily  life. 

The  great  turning-point  in  the  life  of  Wordsworth  was 
the  year  1795,  when  his  sister  Dora  joined  him  and 
became  henceforth  the  chosen  comrade  of  his  intellectual 
life,  not  less  than  the  confidant  of  his  emotions.  The 
period  preceding  had  been  spent  somewhat  aimlessly,  and 
is  memorable  only  for  the  foreign  travel  Wordsworth  had 
indulged  in,  his  hopes  of  France,  and  his  subsequent  dis- 
illusionment and  despair.  Like  every  poet  of  his  day,  save 
Keats  and  Scott,  he  was  violently  affected  by  the  French 
Revolution,  and  was  caught  within  the  whirl  of  its  frantic 
fascination.  But  with  the  Reign  of  Terror  his  hopes  of 
world-wide  regeneration  perished,  and  a  sullen  and  im- 
penetrable despair  fell  upon  him.  He  was  indeed  slow  to 
give  up  hope,  and  when  England  declared  war  upon 
France  he  flamed  out  in  indignant  denunciation  of  what 
seemed  to  him  a  disgraceful  outrage.  The  effect  of  these 
events  on  his  poetry  we  shall  best  see  when  we  come  to 
consider  his  patriotic  poems.  In  the  mean  time,  what  we 
have  to  observe  is  that  in  1795  Wordsworth  was  as  un- 
settled as  man  could  well  be,  and  was  without  any  true 
aim  or  work  in  life.  He  was,  to  quote  Mr.  F.W.  H.  Myers, 
"a  rough  and  somewhat  stubborn  young  man,  who,  in 
nearly  thirty  years  of  life,  had  seemed  alternately  to  idle 
without  grace  and  to  study  without  advantage,  and  it 
might  well  have  seemed  incredible  that  he  could  have  any- 


1 6       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

thing  new  or  valuable  to  communicate  to  mankind."  It 
was  from  this  state  of  lethargic  aimlessness  that  Dora 
Wordsworth  redeemed  him.  She  revealed  to  him  the  true 
bent  of  his  nature,  and  discovered  to  him  his  true  powers. 
She  led  him  back  to  the  healing  solitude  of  nature,  where 
alone,  as  she  justly  perceived,  his  mind  could  find  a  fit 
environment,  and  his  powers  could  ripen  into  greatness. 
She  understood  him  better  than  he  understood  himself. 
She  knew  that  he  was  unfitted  for  public  life,  or  the  con- 
duct of  affairs,  but  that  there  was  in  him  that  which  might 
be  of  infinite  service  to  the  world,  if  fitting  opportunity 
were  given  for  its  development.  And  she  judged  that 
nowhere  so  well  as  in  the  beloved  environment  of  his  native 
mountains  would  that  spark  of  ethereal  fire  which  pos- 
sessed him  be  kindled  into  a  living  and  animating  flame. 
Some  years  were  yet  to  elapse  before  he  finally  settled  at 
Grasmere,  but  they  were  years  passed  in  seclusion,  during 
which  he  gradually  gave  himself  up  to  that  appointed  task 
of  poetic  toil  to  which  he  felt  himself  divinely  consecrated. 
It  meant  for  him  a  practical  renunciation  of  the  world. 
He  had  but  the  scantiest  means  of  subsistence,  and  knew 
well  that  such  a  life  as  he  now  contemplated  must  be 
almost  a  peasant's  life,  lived  upon  a  peasant's  frugal  fare 
and  in  a  peasant's  mean  surroundings.  When  he  turned 
his  back  upon  great  cities,  and  steadily  set  his  face  toward 
the  English  mountains,  he  resolutely  shut  the  door  upon 
all  hopes  of  brilliant  worldly  success,  upon  all  the  natural 
hopes  of  advancement  in  life  which  a  man  of  culture  and 
education  may  legitimately  entertain. 

His  only  guide  in  this  most  difficult  hour  was  the  need 
and  impulse  of  his  own  nature.  He  felt  that  in  the  soli- 
tude of  nature  there  was  peace,  and  there  only  was  a  life 


Wordsworth's  Life  and  His  Poetry         17 

of  plain  living  and  high  thinking  possible.  All  he  knew 
was  that  the  common  ideals  of  life  did  not  satisfy  him, 
and  he  exclaimed: 

The  weaJthiest  man  amongst  us  is  the  best ; 
No  grandeur  now  in  nature  or  in  book 
Delights  us. 

He  had  learned  the  great  lesson  of  living,  not  for  things 
temporal,  but  for  things  eternal;  he  had  set  himself  above 
all  to  be  true  to  his  own  self,  and  he  had  the  rare  daring 
of  being  absolutely  faithful  to  the  voice  of  this  supreme 
conviction.  Any  greatness  which  attaches  to  Words- 
worth's character  directly  springs  from  this  spiritual  hon- 
esty of  purpose.  The  noblest  qualities  of  his  poetry,  all 
the  qualities  indeed  which  differentiate  and  distinguish  it, 
and  give  it  a  lofty  isolation  in  English  literature,  were  the 
natural  result  of  this  temper  of  spirit  and  method  of  life. 
There,  far  from  the  fevered  life  of  cities,  where  the  free 
winds  blew,  and  the  spacious  silence  taught  serenity; 
there,  in  the  daily  contemplation  of  simple  life  and  natural 
beauty  among  his  own  mountains — the  bonds  of  custom 
fell  from  Wordsworth's  spirit,  and  he  became  enfranchised 
with  a  glorious  liberty.  Strength  returned  to  him,  clear- 
ness and  resoluteness  of  spirit,  sanity  and  joy  of  mind. 
The  great  lesson  which  he  was  consecrated  to  expound 
was  the  nobleness  of  unworldly  and  simple  life,  and  such 
lessons  could  only  be  learned,  much  less  taught,  by  a  life 
which  was  itself  infinitely  removed  from  the  vulgar  scram- 
ble for  wealth  and  the  insane  thirst  for  social  power.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  it  is  to  Dora  Wordsworth  that 
England  owes  the  precious  gift  of  her  brother's  genius. 
She  recognized  it  when  he  himself  was  dubious;  she 


1 8       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

taught  him  how  to  collect  his  powers  and  develop  them; 
she  encouraged  him  when  almost  every  other  voice  was 
hostile,  and  finally,  she  taught  him  that  serene  confidence 
in  himself  and  in  his  mission,  which  made  him  say  to  his 
few  friends  when  the  public  contempt  and  apathy  of  his 
time  seemed  universal  and  unbearable:  "Make  yourselves 
at  rest  respecting  me;  I  speak  the  truths  the  world  must 
feel  at  last." 


QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  How  was    Wordsworth's    youth  influenced    by  his  sur- 
roundings? 

2.  In  what  respects  was  he  a  part  of  the  rural  society  in 
which  he  lived? 

3.  How  did  Wordsworth's  ideal  of  life  compare  with  that 
of  his  fellow-poets? 

4.  Why  was  Wordsworth  especially  attracted  to  Burns  and 
Scott? 

5.  How  was  he  affected  by  the  events  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution? 

6.  What  important  influence  did  Dora  Wordsworth  have 
upon  him? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ward' 's  English  Poets.  Vol.  IV.  Essay  by  R.W.  Church, 
and  Selections. 

Dorothy  Wordsworth.     Edmund  Lee. 

Wordsworth.  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  (English  Men  of  Letters 
Series.) 

Journals  of  Dorothy  Wordsworth.  Edited  by  William 
Knight. 

Hours  in  a  Library.  (Wordsworth's  Ethics.)  Third  Series. 
Leslie  Stephen. 


CHAPTER  III 

WORDSWORTH'S  VIEW  OF  NATURE  AND 

MAN 

I  have  spoken  of  Wordsworth  as  having  a  new  and 
original  philosophy  to  unfold,  a  new  and  individual  view 
of  nature  to  expound.  What,  then,  was  that  view  ?  The 
love  of  nature  is  to  be  found  in  all  the  English  poets,  from 
Chaucer  downward.  In  Wordsworth's  own  day  both 
Byron  and  Shelley  were  writing  poems  thoroughly  impreg- 
nated with  the  love  of  nature.  If  we  eliminated  from 
English  poetry  all  the  passages  which  deal  with  the  charm 
and  glory  of  nature,  we  should  have  destroyed  all  that  is 
sweetest,  freshest,  and  most  characteristic  in  it.  What 
is  there,  then,  in  Wordsworth's  treatment  of  nature  which 
differs  from  the  poetry  of  those  who  have  gone  before 
him  ?  It  is  perilous  to  be  too  positive  where  many  fine 
and  delicate  distinctions  are  involved;  but,  speaking 
generally,  it  may  be  said  that  Wordsworth  differs  from  all 
other  poets  in  the  stress  he  puts  upon  the  moral  influences 
of  nature.  To  Byron  nature  was  the  great  consoler  in 
the  hour  of  his  revolt  against  the  folly  of  man,  and  he 
found  in  her,  not  merely  hospitality,  but  a  certain  exhila- 
ration which  fed  the  fierce  defiance  of  his  heart  and 
armed  him  with  new  strength  for  the  fight.  To  Shelley 
nature  is  more  of  a  personality  than  to  Byron,  but  it  is  an 
ethereal  and  lovely  presence,  a  veiled  splendor,  kindling 
sweet  ardor  in  the  heart  and  exercising  an  intoxicating 

19 


2O       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

magic  on  the  mind.  But  with  Wordsworth  the  idea  of 
the  living  personality  of  Nature  is  a  definite  reality.  He 
loves  her  as  he  might  love  a  mistress,  and  communes  with 
her  as  mind  may  commune  with  mind.  To  him  she  is  a 
vast  embodied  thought,  a  presence  not  merely  capable 
of  inspiring  delightful  ardor,  but  of  elevating  man  by 
noble  discipline.  Take,  for  instance,  his  "Sonnet  on 
Calais  Beach": 

It  is  a  beauteous  evening,  calm  and  free; 
The  holy  time  is  quiet  as  a  nun 
Breathless  with  adoration  ;  the  broad  sun 

Is  sinking  down  in  its  tranquillity; 

The  gentleness  of  heaven  is  on  the  sea: 
Listen!  the  mighty  Being  is  awake, 
And  doth  with  his  eternal  motion  make 

A  sound  like  thunder — everlastingly. 

Or  take  his  conception  of  human  life  in  the  presence  of 
the  everlastingness  of  nature: 

Our  noisy  years  seem  moments  in  the  being 
Of  the  eternal  silence. 

Or  ponder  the  spirit  of  the  well-known  verses: 

The  outward  shows  of  sky  and  earth, 

Of  hill  and  valley  he  has  viewed  ; 
And  impulses  of  deeper  birth 

Have  come  to  him  in  solitude. 

In  common  things  that  round  us  lie 
Some  random  truths  he  can  impart — 

The  harvest  of  a  quiet  eye 
That  broods  and  sleeps  on  his  own  heart. 

Or  mark  how  he  replies  to  the  restlessness  of  life  which  is 
divorced  from  habitual  intercourse  with  nature: 


Wordsworth's  View  of  Nature  and  Man     21 

Think  you,  'mid  all  this  mighty  sum 

Of  things  forever  speaking, 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  come, 

But  we  must  still  be  seeking  ? 

Nor  less  I  deem  that  there  are  powers 
Which  of  themselves  our  minds  impress; 

That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours 
Into  a  wise  passiveness. 

And  hark!  how  blithe  the  throstle  sings  ; 

He,  too,  is  no  mean  preacher ; 
Come  forth  into  the  light  of  things — 

Let  Nature  be  your  teacher. 

One  impulse  of  a  vernal  wood 

May  teach  you  more  of  man, 
Of  moral  evil  and  of  good, 

Than  all  the  sages  can. 

In  these  verses  what  most  strikes  us  is  the  vividness  of 
Wordsworth's  conception  of  nature  as  endowed  with  per- 
sonality— "the  mighty  Being,"  and  the  emphasis  with 
which  he  declares  that  nature  is  a  teacher  whose  wisdom 
we  can  learn  if  we  will,  and  without  which  any  human  life 
is  vain  and  incomplete. 

An  artist,  who  is  also  a  teacher  of  art,  has  laid  down 
the  rule  that  in  painting  landscape  what  we  want  is  not  the 
catalogue  of  the  landscape,  but  the  emotion  of  the  artist 
in  painting  it.  This  is  the  artistic  theory  of  the  impres- 
sionist school,  and  it  may  be  said  that  in  this  sense  Words- 
worth was  an  impressionist.  Such  a  poet  as  Thomson 
gives  us  in  his  "Seasons"  the  mere  catalogue  of  nature, 
and  as  a  catalogue  it  is  excellent.  If  the  effects  of  nature 
were  to  be  put  up  to  auction,  no  catalogue  could  serve  us 
better  than  Thomson's  "Seasons."  But  what  Thomson 
cannot  give  us,  and  what  Wordsworth  does  give  us,  is  the 


22       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

impression  which  nature  produces  on  his  own  spirit.  He 
teaches  us  that  between  man  and  nature  there  is  mutual 
consciousness  and  mystic  intercourse.  It  is  not  for  noth- 
ing God  has  set  man  in  this  world  of  sound  and  vision:  it 
is  in  the  power  of  nature  to  penetrate  his  spirit,  to  reveal 
him  to  himself,  to  communicate  to  him  divine  instruc- 
tions, to  lift  him  into  spiritual  life  and  ecstasy.  The  poem 
of  "The  Daffodils"  is  simply  a  piece  of  lovely  word-paint- 
ing till  we  reach  the  lines — 

They  flash  upon  the  inward  eye, 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude  ; 

and  it  is  in  those  lines  the  real  spirit  of  the  poem  speaks. 
There  was  something  in  that  sight  of  the  daffodils,  dan- 
cing in  jocund  glee,  that  kindled  a  joy,  an  intuition,  a  hope 
in  the  poet's  mind,  and  through  the  vision  an  undying 
impulse  of  delight  and  illumination  reached  him.  Words- 
worth does  not  indulge  in  the  "poetic  fallacy."  He  does 
not  take  his  mood  to  Nature  and  persuade  himself  that  she 
reflects  it;  but  he  goes  to  Nature  with  an  open  mind,  and 
leaves  her  to  create  the  mood  in  him.  He  does  not  ask 
her  to  echo  him;  but  he  stands  docile  in  her  presence,  and 
asks  to  be  taught  of  her.  To  persuade  ourselves  that 
Nature  mirrors  our  mood,  giving  gray  skies  to  our  grief, 
and  the  piping  of  glad  birds  in  answer  to  the  joy-bells  of 
our  hope,  is  not  to  take  a  genuine  delight  in  Nature.  It  is 
to  make  her  our  accomplice  rather  than  our  instructress; 
our  mimic,  not  our  mistress.  Many  poets  have  done  this, 
and  nothing  is  commoner  in  current  poetry.  The  original- 
ity of  Wordsworth  is,  that  he  never  thinks  of  Nature  in 
any  other  way  than  as  a  mighty  presence,  before  whom 
he  stands  silent,  like  a  faithful  high-priest,  who  waits  in 


Wordsworth's  View  of  Nature  and  Man     23 

solemn  expectation  for  the  whisper  of  enlightenment  and 
wisdom. 

Let  us  turn  to  one  of  his  earliest  poems,  the  "Lines 
Composed  at  Tintern  Abbey, "  July  13,  1798,  and  we  shall 
see  how  clearly  defined  in  Wordsworth's  mind  this  con- 
ception of  nature  was,  even  at  the  commencement  of  his 
career.  Wordsworth  was  not  yet  thirty,  and  had  not  yet 
recognized  his  true  vocation  in  life;  but  nevertheless,  all 
that  he  afterward  said  about  nature  is  uttered  in  outline 
in  these  memorable  lines.  He  speaks  of  the  "tranquil 
restoration,"  the  sensations  sweet,  "felt  in  the  blood  and 
felt  along  the  heart,"  which  nature  had  already  wrought 
in  him.  He  has  peace, 

While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  song, 
We  see  into  the  life  of  things. 

The  mere  boyish  love  of  nature,  when  the  sounding  cata- 
ract haunted  him  like  a  passion,  he  characterizes  as  one  of 
the  "glad  animal  movements"  of  the  boy;  now  he  has 
perceived  how  nature  not  merely  works  delight  in  the 
blood,  but  flashes  illumination  on  the  soul. 

For  I  have  learned 

To  look  on  Nature,  not  as  in  the  hours 
Of  thoughtless  youth,  but  hearing  oftentimes 
The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity, 
Nor  harsh  nor  grating,  though  of  ample  power 
To  chasten  and  subdue.     And  I  have  felt 
A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts  ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  ; 


24      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 

All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 

And  rolls  through  all  things.     Therefore  am  I  still 

A  lover  of  the  meadows,  and  the  woods, 

And  mountains  ;  and  of  all  that  we  behold 

From  this  round  earth  ;  and  of  all  the  mighty  world 

Of  eye  and  ear,  both  what  they  half  create 

And  what  perceive  ;  well  pleased  to  recognize 

In  Nature  and  the  language  of  the  sense 

The  anchor  of  my  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse, 

The  guide,  the  guardian  of  my  heart  and  soul, 

Of  all  my  moral  being. 

We  have  only  to  compare  this  passage  with  such  poems 
as  Byron's  "Address  to  the  Ocean"  or  Shelley's  "Ode 
to  the  West  Wind"  to  see  how  great  is  the  difference 
between  Wordsworth's  view  of  nature  and  theirs,  and  how 
profoundly  original  Wordsworth's  view  is.  There  is  a 
subtle  power  in  Wordsworth's  verses  which  seems  to 
breathe  the  very  spirit  of  Nature,  and  to  interpret  her. 
We  entirely  lose  sight  of  the  revealer  in  the  revelation; 
we  pass  out  of  the  sphere  of  Wordsworth's  mood  into  the 
very  mood  and  heart  of  Nature;  we  feel  the  presence  of 
something  deeply  interfused  through  all  the  inanimate 
world.  The  world  indeed  is  no  longer  dead  to  us,  but 
animate,  and  we  feel  the  spirit  and  motion  of  Nature  like 
the  actual  contact  of  a  living  and  a  larger  soul.  Words- 
worth is  thus  not  so  much  the  poet  as  the  high-priest  of 
Nature,  and  the  feeling  he  creates  in  us  is  not  so  much 
delight  as  worship. 

One  effect  of  this  ardent  love  of  nature  in  Wordsworth 
is,  that  he  excels  all  other  poets  in  the  fidelity  of  his 
descriptions,  the  minute  accuracy  of  his  observation  of 
natural  beauty.  His  eye  for  nature  is  always  fresh  and 


Wordsworth's  View  of  Nature  and  Man    25 

true,  and  what  he  sees  he  describes  with  an  admirable 
realism.  His  sense  of  form  and  color  is  also  perfect,  and 
in  nothing  is  he  so  great  an  artist  as  in  his  power  of  con- 
veying in  a  phrase  the  exact  truth  of  the  things  he  sees. 
When  he  speaks  of  the  voice  of  the  stock-dove  as  "buried 
among  trees,"  he  uses  the  only  word  that  could  completely 
convey  to  us  the  idea  of  seclusion,  the  remote  depth  of 
greenwood  in  which  the  dove  loves  to  hide  herself.  The 
star-shaped  shadow  of  the  daisy  cast  upon  the  stone  is 
noted  also  with  the  same  loving  accuracy,  and  can  only  be 
the  result  of  direct  observation.  Nothing  escaped  his 
vigilance,  and  his  sense  of  sound  was  as  perfect  as  his 
power  of  vision.  The  wild  wind-swept  summit  of  a  moun- 
tain-pass could  hardly  be  better  painted  than  in  this  word- 
picture  : 

The  single  sheep,  and  that  one  blasted  tree, 
And  the  bleak  music  of  that  old  stone  wall. 

We  hear,  as  we  read  these  lines,  the  wind  whistling 
through  the  crevices  of  the  stone  walls  of  Westmoreland, 
and  by  the  magic  of  this  single  phrase  we  feel  at  once  the 
desolation  of  the  scene,  and  we  catch  its  spirit.  For, 
after  all,  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  the  most  accurate 
description  of  itself  to  create  emotion  in  us;  it  is  the  emo- 
tion of  the  poet  we  need  to  interpret  for  us  the  spirit  of 
what  he  sees,  and  this  is  just  what  Wordsworth  does  for 
us.  He  scorned  what  he  called  taking  an  inventory  of 
nature,  and  said  that  nature  did  not  permit  it.  His  com- 
ment on  a  brilliant  poet  was:  "He  should  have  left  his 
pencil  and  note-book  at  home,  fixed  his  eye  as  he  walked 
with  a  reverent  attention  on  all  that  surrounded  him,  and 
taken  all  into  a  heart  that  could  understand  and  enjoy. 


26       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

He  would  have  discovered  that  while  much  of  what  he  had 
admired  was  preserved  to  him,  much  was  also  most  wisely 
obliterated;  that  which  remained — the  picture  surviving 
in  his  mind — would  have  presented  the  ideal  and  essential 
truth  of  the  scene,  and  done  so  in  a  large  part  by  discard- 
ing much  which,  though  in  itself  striking,  was  not  charac- 
teristic." This  was  Wordsworth's  own  method.  Though 
unsurpassed  in  the  fidelity  of  his  observation,  he  never 
relies  on  observation  alone  for  his  interpretation  of  nature. 
When  he  has  observed  he  allows  the  picture  of  what  he 
has  seen  to  sink  quietly  into  the  memory,  and  he  broods 
above  it  in  silent  joy.  The  result  is,  that  when  the  hour 
comes  to  combine  his  materials  in  a  poem,  they  are  already 
sifted  for  us,  and  are  saturated  with  sentiment.  Many  of 
the  noblest  passages  in  Wordsworth  might  be  thus  de- 
scribed as  observation  touched  with  emotion — unusually 
accurate  observation  touched  with  the  finest  and  purest 
emotion. 

Another  direct  effect  of  Wordsworth's  view  of  nature 
is  his  view  of  man.  He  began  life  with  the  most  ardent 
hopes  for  the  moral  regeneration  of  mankind,  and  it  was 
only  with  bitter  reluctance  he  renounced  them,  in  the 
frantic  recoil  which  the  excesses  of  the  French  Revolution 
produced.  From  the  bitterness  of  that  trouble,  as  we  have 
seen,  he  was  rescued  by  his  sister  Dora,  and  going  back 
to  the  calm  of  nature,  he  found  a  truer  view  of  mankind. 
He  believed  that  he  had  put  his  finger  on  the  real  secret  of 
the  unsatisfied  passions  and  misery  of  mankind  when  he 
taught  that  man,  divorced  from  living  intercourse  with 
nature,  could  not  but  be  restless  and  unhappy.  Man  was 
set  in  this  world  of  nature  because  the  world  of  nature 
was  necessary  to  his  well-being,  nor  were  spiritual  sanity 


Wordsworth's  View  of  Nature  and  Man     27 

and  delight  possible  without  contact  with  nature.  In  this 
view  he  was  confirmed  when  he  found  that  in  the  remote 
dales  of  the  English  Lake  District  human  life  attained  a 
robust  virtue  denied  to  the  dwellers  in  great  cities.  He 
saw  that  the  essentials  of  a  really  lofty  and  happy  life 
were  few,  and  that  they  were  found  in  the  greatest  profu- 
sion where  life  was  simplest  and  contact  with  nature  was 
habitual.  His  faith  in  mankind  returned,  and  man  again 
became 

An  object  of  delight, 
Of  pure  imagination  and  of  love. 

Set  in  his  proper  environment  of  nature,  breathing  clear 
air,  looking  on  refreshing  visions  of  glory  and  delight, 
Wordsworth  saw  that  man  was  at  his  best,  and  he  regarded 
him  with  genuine  reverence.  His  panacea  for  the  healing 
of  his  country  was  a  return  to  nature,  and  it  was  in  pathetic 
reproach  he  wrote: 

The  world  is  too  much  with  us  ;  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers  ; 
Little  we  see  in  Nature  that  is  ours  ! 

We  have  given  away  our  hearts,  a  sordid  boon  ! 

There  is  no  poet  who  shows  so  great  a  reverence  for  man 
as  man.  Lowliness  and  poverty  cannot  hide  from  him  the 
great  qualities  of  heart  and  character,  which  the  selfish  and 
unthinking  never  see.  He  sings  the  homely  sanctities  and 
virtues  of  the  poor.  Human  nature  is  to  him  a  sacred 
thing,  and  even  in  its  frailest  and  humblest  forms  is  re- 
garded with  gentleness  and  sympathy.  And  the  real  source 
of  Wordsworth's  reverence  for  man  lies  in  his  reverence 
for  nature.  It  is  the  constant  and  purging  vision  of  nature 
which  enables  him  to  perceive  how  mean  are  the  cares  with 


28       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

which  those  who  are  rich  burden  themselves,  and  how 
noble,  and  even  joyous,  men  can  be  under  the  stress  of 
penury  and  labor,  if  they  let  nature  lead  them  and  exalt 
them. 

The  spirit  of  this  teaching  is  nowhere  more  happily 
expressed  than  in  the  lovely  lines  which  occur  in  the  con- 
clusion of  the  "Song  at  the  Feast  of  Brougham  Castle": 

Love  had  he  found  in  huts  where  poor  men  lie  ; 

His  daily  teachers  had  been  woods  and  rills, 
The  silence  which  is  in  the  starry  sky, 

The  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills. 

These  were  the  agencies  which  had  softened,  soothed, 
and  tamed  the  fiery  heart  of  Clifford,  and  it  was  by  the 
same  simple  ministration  he  himself  had  been  led  into 
settled  peace. 

It  may,  indeed,  be  doubted  whether  it  is  possible  to 
understand  the  full  significance  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  in 
any  other  environment  than  that  in  which  it  was  produced. 
So  at  least  thought  James  Macdonell,  when  he  wrote: 
"What  blasts  of  heavenly  sunshine,  as  if  blown  direct  from 
the  gates  of  some  austerely  Puritan  paradise !  What  gusts 
of  air,  touched  with  the  cold  rigor  of  the  mountain  peak! 
What  depth  of  moralizing,  touched  with  the  hues  of  a 
masculine  gloom!  What  felicity  of  diction,  clothing  in 
immortal  brevity  of  phrase  the  deepest  aspirations  of  the 
brave!  Never  did  I  read  Wordsworth  with  such  full 
delight,  because  never  had  I  so  charged  my  mind  with  the 
spirit  of  the  mountains  which  were  the  food  of  his  soul." 

What  Burns  did  for  the  Scotch  peasant,  Wordsworth 
has  done  for  the  shepherds  and  the  husbandmen  of  Eng- 
land, But  he  has  done  more  than  illustrate  the  virtues  of 


Wordsworth's  View  of  Nature  and  Man     29 

a  class:  from  the  study  of  peasant  life,  set  amid  the  splen- 
dor, and  vivified  by  the  influence  of  nature,  he  attained  a 
profound  faith  in  man  himself,  and  a  reverent  understand- 
ing of  the  inherent  grandeur  of  all  human  life. 


QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  How  did  Byron's  and  Shelley's  views  of  nature  differ 
from  that  of  Wordsworth? 

2.  Give  illustrations  of  his  idea  of  nature  as  a  personality? 

3.  Compare  his  view  of  nature  with  that  of  Thomson. 

4.  What  is  the  difference  between  the  idea  of  nature  as  an 
"accomplice"  and  as  a  "mighty  presence"? 

5.  Illustrate  this  from  the  "Lines  Composed  at  Tintern 
Abbey." 

6.  Illustrate  the  faithfulness  of  his  descriptions  of  nature. 

7.  What  was  his  comment  on  a  poet  who  "  took  an  inventory 
of  nature"? 

8.  What  did  he  teach  as  to  man's  need  of  close  contact  with 
nature? 

9.  Why  does  Wordsworth's  poetry  reveal  more  than  the 
virtues  of  a  class? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ward's  English  Poets.  Vol.  IV.  Essay  by  R.  W.  Church, 
and  Selections. 

Wordsworth.  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  (English  Men  of  Letters 
Series.) 

Wordsworthiana.  Papers  read  to  the  Wordsworth  Society. 
Edited  by  Wm.  Knight. 

Poetic  Interpretation  of  Nature.  (Wordsworth.)  J.  C. 
Shairp. 


CHAPTER   IV 

WORDSWORTH'S  PATRIOTIC  AND  POLITICAL 
POEMS 

An  excellent  and  eloquent  critic,  Professor  Dowden, 
has  spoken  of  Wordsworth's  "uncourageous  elder 
years,"  and  has  founded  the  phrase  upon  this  sentence 
of  Wordsworth's:  "Years  have  deprived  me  of  cour- 
age, in  the  sense  which  the  word  bears  when  applied 
by  Chaucer  to  the  animation  of  birds  in  springtime." 
A  little  reflection  will,  I  think,  show  that  this  confes- 
sion of  the  poet  hardly  justifies  the  phrase  of  the  critic. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  a  general  impression  that  Wordsworth 
began  life  an  ardent  Radical  and  ended  it  as  a  stanch 
Conservative.  If  this  were  all,  the  phrase  might  be 
allowed  to  pass,  but  the  impression  such  a  phrase  creates 
is,  that  Wordsworth  not  merely  renounced  his  early  hopes 
and  creed,  but  grew  apathetic  toward  the  great  human 
causes  which  stirred  his  blood  in  youth.  Browning's  fine 
poem  of  the  "Lost  Leader"  has  often  been  applied  to 
Wordsworth,  and  it  has  been  assumed  in  many  quarters, 
with  what  degree  of  truth  we  do  not  know,  that  Browning 
had  Wordsworth  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote  that  powerful 
and  pathetic  indictment.  However  this  may  be,  nothing 
is  commoner  than  the  assumption  that  one  result  of 
Wordsworth's  remote  seclusion  from  the  great  stress  of 
life  was  that  he  lost  interest  in  public  affairs,  and  cared 
little  for  the  great  movements  of  his  day.  Than  this 

30 


Wordsworth's  Patriotic  and  Political  Poems    3 1 

assumption  nothing  can  be  falser.  To  say  nothing  of  the 
prose  writings  of  Wordsworth,  few  poets  have  given  us  a 
larger  body  of  patriotic  poetry,  and  poetry  impregnated 
with  politics,  than  Wordsworth.  Perhaps  it  is  because 
the  finest  poems  of  Wordsworth  are  those  that  deal  with 
the  emotions  of  man  in  the  presence  of  nature  that  com- 
paratively little  interest  attaches  to  his  patriotic  poetry. 
Such  poetry,  however,  Wordsworth  wrote  throughout  his 
life,  and  if  he  was  not  altogether  a  political  force,  it  is 
quite  certain  that  he  never  ceased  to  take  a  keen  interest 
in  politics.  He  had  national  aims,  and  was  full  of  the 
most  ardent  love  of  country.  It  may  be  well  to  recall  to 
the  minds  of  my  readers  this  aspect  of  Wordsworth's  life 
and  influence. 

As  regards  the  earlier  part  of  his  life,  Wordsworth  has 
left  an  abundant  record  of  his  thoughts  in  his  prose  writ- 
ings. No  poet  save  Milton  has  written  with  so  large  a 
touch  upon  national  affairs  and  has  displayed  so  lofty 
a  spirit.  His  prose  does  not  indeed  glow  with  so  intense  a 
passion,  nor  is  it  so  gorgeous  as  Milton's,  but  it  is  ani- 
mated and  inspired  by  the  same  spirit.  And  in  its  more 
passionate  passages  something  of  Milton's  pomp  of  style 
is  discernible — something  of  his  overwhelming  force  of 
language  and  cogency  of  thought.  Wordsworth's  tract 
on  the  "Convention  of  Cintra"  belongs  to  the  same  class 
of  writings  as  Milton's  "Areopagitica,"  and  while  not  its 
equal  in  sustained  splendor  of  diction,  it  is  distinguished 
by  the  same  breadth  of  view  and  eager  patriotism. 
Wordsworth  has  himself  defined  excellence  of  writing  as 
the  conjunction  of  reason  and  passion,  and  judged  by  this 
test,  Wordsworth's  occasional  utterances  on  politics  attain 
a  rare  excellence.  It  would  have  been  singular  in  such  an 


32       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

age  if  any  man  who  possessed  emotion  enough  to  be  a  poet 
had  nothing  to  say  upon  the  great  events  which  were  alter- 
ing the  map  of  Europe.  Wordsworth  from  the  first  never 
concealed  his  opinions  on  these  subjects.  He  went  as  far 
as  he  could  in  apologizing  for  the  errors  of  the  French 
Revolution,  when  he  said  truly  that  "revolution  is  not  the 
season  of  true  liberty. ' '  The  austerity  which  characterized 
his  whole  life  characterizes  the  very  temper  of  his  apology 
for  the  excesses  of  the  Revolution.  He  shed  no  tears  over 
the  execution  of  Louis.  He  laments  a  larger  public  calam- 
ity, "that  any  combination  of  circumstances  should  have 
rendered  it  necessary  or  advisable  to  veil  for  a  moment  the 
statutes  of  the  laws,  and  that  by  such  emergency  the  cause 
of  twenty-five  millions  of  people,  I  may  say  of  the  whole 
human  race,  should  have  been  so  materially  injured.  Any 
other  sorrow  for  the  death  of  Louis  is  irrational  and 
weak."  He  is  even  ardent  republican  enough  to  argue 
for  equality,  and  to  say  that  in  the  perfect  state  "no  dis- 
tinctions are  to  be  admitted  but  such  as  have  evidently  for 
their  object  the  general  good."  This  last  sentence  strikes 
the  keynote  in  much  of  the  philosophy  of  Wordsworth. 
"Simplification  was,"  as  John  Morley  has  observed,  "the 
keynote  of  the  revolutionary  time."  That  lesson  Words- 
worth thoroughly  learned,  and  never  forgot.  It  is  the 
very  essence  of  the  democratic  spirit  to  pierce  beneath  the 
artificial  distinctions  of  a  time  and  grasp  the  essential;  to 
take  man  for  what  he  is,  not  for  what  he  seems  to  be; 
to  reverence  man  wherever  he  is  found,  and  to  reverence 
not  least  the  man  who  toils  in  the  lowliest  walks  of  life. 
If  this  be  the  spirit  of  democracy,  then  Wordsworth  kept 
the  democratic  faith  whole  and  undefiled.  So  far  from 
repudiating  the  political  creed  of  his  life,  he  spiritualized 


Wordsworth's  Patriotic  and  Political  Poems    33 

it,  and  lived  in  obedience  to  its  essential  elements  all  his 
life.  That  in  later  life  he  manifested  an  incapacity  for 
the  rapid  assimilation  of  new  ideas;  that  his  notions 
stiffened,  and  his  perceptions  failed;  that  he  opposed 
Catholic  Emancipation  and  the  Reform  Bill — is  merely  to 
say,  in  other  words,  that  Wordsworth  grew  old.  It  is  a 
rare  spectacle,  perhaps  the  rarest,  to  see  a  great  mind 
resist  the  stiffening  of  age  and  retain  its  versatility  and 
freshness  of  outlook  in  the  last  decades  of  life.  Words- 
worth was  never  a  versatile  man  and  never  had  any  marked 
capacity  for  the  assimilation  of  new  ideas.  But  how  very 
far  Wordsworth  was  from  ever  being  a  fossilized  Tory  we 
may  judge  by  his  own  saying  in  later  life:  "I  have  no 
respect  whatever  for  Whigs,  but  I  have  a  good  deal  of  the 
Chartist  in  me."  However  his  political  insight  may  have 
failed  him  in  his  apprehension  of  the  party  measures  of 
his  later  life,  it  cannot  be  seriously  questioned  that  Words- 
worth always  remained  true  at  heart  to  the  cause  of  the 
people,  and  never  swerved  in  his  real  reverence  for  man 
as  man. 

The  urgency  of  the  political  passion  in  Wordsworth 
can  be  felt  all  through  the  days  of  the  great  war,  and  per- 
haps the  noblest  record  of  that  period  is  in  the  long  series 
of  sonnets  which  Wordsworth  wrote  between  the  years 
1803  and  1816.  In  the  year  1809  he  wrote  scarcely  any- 
thing that  was  not  related  to  the  life  of  nations.  It  was 
then  that  he  apostrophized  Saragossa  and  lamented  over 
the  submission  of  the  Tyrolese.  And  if  few  poets  have 
written  so  largely  on  the  current  events  of  their  day,  it 
may  certainly  be  added  that  no  poet  has  showed  a  more 
cosmopolitan  spirit.  .It  was  indeed  a  time  when  England 
was  in  closer  touch  with  the  struggling  nationalities  of  the 


34       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Continent  than  ever  before.  A  common  calamity  had 
drawn  together  all  the  peoples  of  Europe  who  still  loved 
liberty.  England  had  never  breathed  the  spirit  of  so  large 
a  life  as  in  those  troublous  days.  She  had  never  known 
a  period  of  such  intense  suspense  and  united  enthusiasm. 
The  beacon-fire  was  built  on  every  hill ;  every  village  green 
resounded  to  the  clang  of  martial  drill;  every  port  had  its 
eager  watchers,  who  swept  the  waste  fields  of  sea  with 
restless  scrutiny.  Children  were  sent  to  bed  with  all  their 
clothes  neatly  packed  beside  them,  in  case  the  alarm  of 
war  should  break  the  midnight  silence;  and  invasion  was 
for  months  an  hourly  fear.  It  was  one  of  those  moments 
of  supreme  peril  and  passion  which  come  rarely  in  the 
life  of  nations — one  of  those  great  regenerating  moments 
when  factions  perish  and  a  nation  rises  into  nobler  life, 
and  the  stress  of  that  great  period  is  felt  in  every  line  that 
Wordsworth  wrote.  His  patriotism  was  of  that  diviner 
kind  which  founds  itself  on  principles  of  universal  truth 
and  righteousness.  It  was  no  splendid  prejudice,  no  insu- 
larity of  thought,  no  mere  sentimental  love  of  country;  it 
gathered  in  its  embrace  the  passions  of  Europe  and 
pleaded  in  its  strenuous  eloquence  the  cause  of  the  op- 
pressed throughout  the  world.  This  breadth  of  view 
which  characterized  Wordsworth's  patriotism  is  its  noblest 
characteristic.  It  is  a  catholic  love  of  liberty  which  gives 
him  spiritual  comradeship  with  every  man  who  has  toiled 
or  suffered  for  his  country.  And  this  spirit  can  find  no 
fuller  exemplification  than  in  his  noble  sonnet,  written  in 
1 802: 


Wordsworth's  Patriotic  and  Political  Poems    35 

TO  TOUSSAINT  L'OUVERTURE. 

Toussaint,  the  most  unhappy  man  of  men! 

Whether  the  whistling  Rustic  tend  his  plough 

Within  thy  hearing,  or  thy  head  be  now 
Pillowed  in  some  dark  dungeon's  earless  den; 
O  miserable  Chieftain!  where  and  when 

Wilt  thou  find  patience?     Yet  die  not!  do  thou 

Wear  rather  in  thy  bonds  a  cheerful  brow; 
Though  fallen  thyself,  never  to  rise  again, 
Live,  and  take  comfort!     Thou  hast  left  behind 

Powers  that  will  work  for  thee;  air,  earth,  and  skies; 
There's  not  a  breathing  of  the  common  wind 

That  will  forget  thee.     Thou  hast  great  allies; 

Thy  friends  are  exultations,  agonies, 
And  love,  and  man's  unconquerable  mind. 

But  catholic  as  Wordsworth's  patriotic  sympathies 
were,  the  noblest  expressions  of  his  patriotism  are  his 
addresses  and  appeals  to  his  own  countrymen.  If  in  later 
life  he  did  not  discern  the  true  spirit  of  his  times,  and 
unconsciously  resisted  the  august  spirit  of  progress,  it  was 
in  part  because  his  honest  pride  of  country  grew  with  his 
growth  and  strengthened  with  his  age.  He  was  loth  to 
admit  faults  and  flaws  in  a  form  of  government  which 
seemed  to  meet  every  just  demand  of  liberty  and  order. 
Besides,  the  great  hindrance  to  democratic  development 
was  to  Wordsworth  not  discoverable  in  any  error  or 
defect  of  government,  but  in  the  defective  method  of  life 
which  his  countrymen  adopted.  When  he  is  called  upon 
to  judge  the  political  measures  of  his  day,  his  touch  is  not 
sure  nor  his  discrimination  wise;  but  when  he  estimates 
the  tendencies  of  the  social  life  of  England  he  is  always 
clear,  cogent,  and  convincing.  His  social  grasp  is  always 
surer  than  his  political,  and  his  finest  sonnets  are  those  in 


36       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

which  he  combines  his  social  insight  with  patriotic  pas- 
sion. Such  a  sonnet  is  this: 

When  I  have  borne  in  memory  what  has  tamed 
Great  nations,  how  ennobling  thoughts  depart 
When  men  change  swords  for  ledgers,  and  desert 

The  student's  bower  for  gold,  some  fear  unnamed 

I  had,  my  country!— am  I  to  be  blamed  ? 
Now  when  I  think  of  thee,  and  what  thou  art, 
Verily  in  the  bottom  of  my  heart 

Of  those  unfilial  fears  I  am  ashamed. 

For  dearly  must  we  prize  thee,  we  who  find 
In  thee  a  bulwark  for  the  cause  of  men; 

And  I  by  my  affection  was  beguiled. 
What  wonder  if  a  poet  now  and  then, 

Among  the  many  movements  of  his  mind, 

Felt  for  thee  as  a  lover  or  a  child  ? 

And  this  is  a  note  which  is  struck  again  and  again.  In 
the  hour  of  peril  his  countrymen  rose  to  the  supreme 
daring  of  the  occasion.  What  he  fears  is,  that  the  relax- 
ation of  that  intense  moral  strain  may  mean  that  national 
life  may  lose  its  saving  salt  of  lofty  purpose  and  sink  into 
carnal  contentment  and  repose.  "Getting  and  spending 
we  lay  waste  our  powers, ' '  is  the  thought  that  frequently 
recurs  in  his  later  poems.  He  fears  the  enervation  of 
prosperity  more  than  the  buffeting  of  adversity.  When 
nations  are  surfeited  with  victory  and  peace,  they  are  too 
apt  to  lose  the  Spartan  temper  of  austere  devotion  to  their 
country  which  made  them  great  in  warlike  days.  And 
why  Wordswoth  so  often  recurs  to  this  thought  is  that 
his  pride  in  his  country  has  no  bounds.  For  the  nation 
which  has  saved  the  liberties  of  Europe  to  fall  into  inglori- 
ous self-indulgence  would  be  the  last  calamity  in  the  pos- 
sible tragedy  of  nations.  It  is  in  the  hour  when  such 


Wordsworth's  Patriotic  and  Political  Poems    37 

fears  beset  him  that  he  appeals  to  "Sidney,  Marvel, 
Harrington,"  who 

Knew  how  genuine  glory  is  put  on, 

Taught  us  how  rightfully  a  nation  shone 

In  splendor,  what  strength  was  that  would  not  bend 

But  in  magnanimous  meekness. 

It  is  then  also  he  thinks  of  Milton,  whose  "soul  was  as  a 
star  and  dwelt  apart,"  and  invokes  that  mighty  shade 
which  haunts  the  Puritan  past  of  England — 

We  are  selfish  men  ; 
O,  raise  us  up,  return  to  us  again, 
And  give  us  manners,  virtue,  freedom,  power. 

And  it  is  when  the  memory  of  that  heroic  past  of  Eng- 
land is  most  vivid  to  his  mind  that  he  touches  his  highest 
note  of  dignified  and  haughty  pride,  and  scorns  the 
thought 

That  this  most  famous  stream  in  bogs  and  sands 
Should  perish!  and  to  evil  and  to  good 
Be  lost  forever.     In  our  halls  is  hung 

Armoury  of  the  invincible  knights  of  old  ; 
We  must  be  free  or  die,  who  speak  the  tongue 

That  Shakespeare  spake  ;  the  faith  and  morals  hold 
Which  Milton  held.     In  everything  we  are  sprung 

Of  earth's  first  blood  ;  have  titles  manifold. 

The  patriotism  of  Wordsworth  is  not  violent  or  fren- 
zied; it  is  comparatively  restrained;  but,  for  that  very 
reason,  in  the  moments  of  its  highest  utterance  there  is  a 
depth  and  force  in  it  such  as  few  writers  display.  When 
habitually  calm  men  break  the  barriers  of  reserve,  there  is 
something  strangely  impressive  in  their  passion.  There 
is  nothing  more  impressive  in  Wordsworth,  as  indica- 
tive of  the  strength  of  his  emotions,  than  these  occasional 


38       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

bursts  of  exalted  patriotism,  and  their  force  is  heightened 
by  the  contrast  they  furnish  to  his  habitual  serenity  of 
temper. 

There  is  one  poem  of  Wordsworth's  which  stands  out 
in  particular  prominence  as  the  greatest  of  all  his  poems 
which  express  the  spirit  of  patriotism;  that  is,  the  "Happy 
Warrior."  This  poem  was  written  in  the  year  1806,  and 
was  inspired  by  the  death  of  Nelson.  It  was  in  the 
autumn  of  the  previous  year  that  Nelson  had  fallen  on  the 
deck  of  the  Victory,  and  the  shock  of  sorrow  and  con- 
sternation which  passed  over  England  has  never  been 
equaled  by  any  similar  public  calamity.  Certainly  the 
death  of  no  individual  has  ever  called  forth  so  spontaneous 
and  general  a  lamentation.  Nelson  was  to  the  England 
of  his  day  the  very  incarnation  of  manly  courage  and 
heroic  virtue.  The  fascination  of  his  name  affected  every 
class  of  society.  He  seemed  to  sum  up  in  himself  that 
reverence  for  duty  which  is  so  characteristic  a  feature  of 
the  English  race.  Between  Nelson  and  Wordsworth 
there  could  be  little  in  common  save  this  bond  of  ardent 
patriotism,  but  that  was  sufficient  to  call  forth  from 
Wordsworth  one  of  his  finest  poems.  Just  as  we  can 
specify  certain  poems  which  constitute  the  high-water 
mark  of  Wordsworth's  genius  in  philosophic  or  lyric 
poetry,  so  we  can  confidently  take  this  poem  as  his  matur- 
est  word  in  patriotic  poetry.  It  breathes  the  very  spirit 
of  consecrated  heroism.  Some  points  of  the  poem  were 
suggested  by  a  more  private  sorrow — the  loss  at  sea  of  his 
brother  John;  but  it  was  out  of  the  larger  emotion  occa- 
sioned by  the  death  of  Nelson  that  the  poem  originated. 
It  is  the  idealized  Nelson  who  stands  before  us  in  these 
verses: 


Wordsworth's  Patriotic  and  Political  Poems    39 

But  who,  if  he  be  called  upon  to  face 

Some  awful  moment,  to  which  Heaven  has  joined 

Great  issues,  good  or  bad  for  human  kind, 

Is  happy  as  a  Lover,  and  attired 

With  sudden  brightness,  like  a  Man  inspired  : 

And,  through  the  heat  of  conflict,  keeps  the  law 

In  calmness  made,  and  sees  what  he  foresaw  ; 

Or  if  an  unexpected  call  succeed, 

Come  when  it  will,  is  equal  to  the  need. 

He  who,  though  thus  endued  as  with  a  sense 

And  faculty  for  storm  and  turbulence, 

Is  yet  a  Soul  whose  master-bias  leans 

To  homefelt  pleasures,  and  to  gentler  scenes. 

This  is  the  Happy  Warrior,  this  is  He 

That  every  man  in  arms  should  wish  to  be. 

When  we  read  these  words  we  are  reminded  of  a  passage 
in  the  "Recluse,"  in  which  Wordsworth  tells  us  he  could 
never  read  of  two  great  war-ships  grappling  without  a 
thrill  of  emulation  more  ardent  than  wise  men  should 
know.  It  is  a  passage  which  throws  a  new  light  upon  the 
nature  of  Wordsworth.  If  he  was  serene,  it  was  not 
because  he  was  lethargic;  if  he  urged  the  blessedness  of 
regulated  passions,  it  was  not  because  his  own  heart  was 
cold;  he,  too,  had  a  passionate  nature  and  heroic  fiber  in 
him,  and  that  courageous  and  soldierly  temper  is  fitly  vin- 
dicated and  expressed  in  the  lofty  spirit  of  his  patriotic 
poems. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  Why  has  it  been  supposed  that  Wordsworth  lost  interest 
in  political  life? 

2.  How  did  he  set  forth  in  his  works  the  true  spirit  of 
democracy? 

3.  What  is  true  of  his  political  views  in  the  later  years  of 
his  life? 


4o       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

4.  How  was  England  affected  by  the  fear  of  Napoleon? 

5.  How  do  Wordsworth's  writings  of  this  period  show  the 
breadth  of  his  patriotism? 

6.  With  what  still  higher  purpose  does  he  appeal  to  his 
own  countrymen? 

7.  Give  illustrations  of  such  expressions. 

8.  What  circumstances  called  forth  the  "  Happy  Warrior"? 

9.  What  light  is  thrown  on  Wordsworth's  character  by  his 
allusion  to  the  "  two  great  war-ships  grappling  "? 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ward's  English  Poets.  Vol.  IV.  Essay  by  R.  W.  Church, 
and  Selections. 

Wordsworth.  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  (English  Men  of  Letters 
Series.) 

Among  My  Books.    (Wordsworth.)    James  Russell  Lowell. 

French  Revolution  and  the  English  Poets.    A.  E.  Hancock. 


CHAPTER  V 

WORDSWORTH'S  PERSONAL  CHARACTER- 
ISTICS 

When  we  put  down  the  works  of  a  poet,  we  are  natu- 
rally inclined  to  ask  what  the  poet  himself  was  like  in  actual 
life,  and  to  seek  some  authentic  presentment  of  him  as  he 
moved  among  men.  In  the  case  of  Wordsworth  we  have 
many  partial  portraits,  but  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  we 
have  any  true  and  finished  picture.  The  seclusion  of 
Wordsworth's  life  saved  him  from  the  scrutiny  of  that 
social  world  where  every  little  trait  of  character  is  indel- 
ibly photographed  on  some  retentive  memory,  and  the 
trifles  of  unconsidered  conversation  are  gathered  up  and 
often  reproduced  after  many  days  in  diaries  and  reminis- 
cences. Considering  the  literary  force  which  Wordsworth 
was,  few  men  have  had  such  scanty  dealings  with  the  liter- 
ary circles  of  their  time.  If  Wordsworth  had  died  at  fifty, 
it  is  pretty  certain  that  beyond  the  reminiscences  of  per- 
sonal friends  like  Coleridge  and  Southey  there  would 
have  been  little  to  guide  us  to  a  true  understanding  of  his 
person  and  character.  Gradually,  however,  as  the  tide 
set  in  his  favor,  the  quiet  house  at  Rydal  Mount  became 
more  and  more  a  place  of  pilgrimage,  and  few  visitors  of 
eminence  came  away  without  noting  down  certain  impres- 
sions, more  or  less  instructive,  of  the  great  Lake  Poet. 

First  of  all  there  come  naturally  the  testimonies  of 
those  men  of  letters  who  formed  a  little  colony  beside  the 

41 


42       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

English  lakes,  and  whose  names  are  inseparably  associ- 
ated with  Wordsworth's.  Southey's  sense  of  Words- 
worth's powers  may  be  measured  by  his  enthusiastic 
verdict,  that  there  never  was  and  never  would  be  a  greater 
poet.  Coleridge  conveys  his  impression  of  Wordsworth's 
strength  of  character,  not  less  than  of  his  genius,  in  the 
pathetic  lines  written  in  the  days  of  his  own  eclipse  and 
sorrow,  and  here  quoted: 

O  great  Bard! 

Ere  yet  that  last  strain  dying  awed  the  air, 
With  steadfast  eye  I  viewed  thee  in  the  choir 
Of  ever-enduring  men. 
Ah!  as  I  listened  with  a  heart  forlorn, 
The  pulses  of  my  being  beat  anew. 

The  quality  in  Wordsworth  which  struck  Coleridge  most 
was  naturally  the  quality  in  which  he  himself  was  most 
deficient — the  robustness  and  sufficiency  of  the  poet's 
nature.  De  Quincey,  in  his  sketch,  observes  the  same 
characteristic,  and  probably  this  was  the  first  and  deepest 
impression  which  Wordsworth  created.  He  struck  all 
who  knew  him  as  a  solid,  indomitable  man,  somewhat 
taciturn,  save  when  the  theme  inspired  him  and  the  com- 
pany was  fitting;  a  man  who  knew  in  what  he  had  be- 
lieved, and  knew  how  to  stand  true  to  himself  and  his 
convictions,  amid  evil  report  and  good  report.  That  there 
should  be  something  of  childlike  vanity  and  harmless  ego- 
tism about  him  was  perhaps  the  natural  consequence  of 
his  lack  of  humor  and  his  secluded  life.  When  Emerson 
visited  him  he  was  much  amused  to  see  Wordsworth 
solemnly  prepare  himself  for  action,  and  then  declaim  like 
a  school-boy  his  latest  sonnet  on  Fingal's  Cave.  If  Words- 
worth had  had  any  of  the  elements  of  humor  in  him,  he 


Wordsworth's  Personal  Characteristics      43 

himself  would  have  been  too  conscious  of  the  ludicrous 
side  of  the  proceeding  to  have  indulged  in  it.  But  Words- 
worth united  in  himself  philosophic  seriousness  and  child- 
like simplicity,  and  was  singularly  insensible  to  humor. 
His  neighbors  said  they  never  heard  him  laugh,  and 
remarked  that  you  could  tell  from  his  face  there  was  no 
laughter  in  his  poetry.  He  took  life  seriously,  and,  to 
quote  Mrs.  Browning's  fine  phrase,  poetry  was  to  him  "as 
serious  as  life."  He  once  told  Sir  George  Beaumont  that 
in  his  opinion  "a  man  of  letters,  and  indeed  all  public  men 
of  every  pursuit,  should  be  severely  frugal."  The  Puritan 
discipline  which  he  applied  to  his  life  molded  his  character, 
and  a  constant  life  of  plain  living  and  high  thinking  left 
little  room  for  the  casual  graces  of  persiflage  and  banter. 
Of  mere  cleverness,  the  airy  agility  of  shallow  brains  and 
ready  tongues,  he  was  destitute.  He  was  not  suave,  not 
fascinating,  scarcely  prepossessing.  But  if  he  was  calm 
it  was  not  with  any  natural  coldness  of  temperament;  his 
calm  was  the  fruit  of  long  discipline  and  fortitude.  One 
acute  observer  speaks  of  the  fearful  intensity  of  his  feel- 
ings and  affections,  and  says  that  if  his  intellect  had  been 
less  strong  they  would  have  destroyed  him  long  ago.  De 
Quincey  in  like  manner  noted  his  look  of  premature  age,* 
"the  furrowed  and  rugged  countenance,  the  brooding 
intensity  of  the  eye,  the  bursts  of  anger  at  the  report  of 
evil  doings" — the  signs  of  the  passionate  forces  which 
worked  within  him.  He  himself  in  his  many  self-revela- 
tions conveys  the  same  impression  of  a  nature  hard  to 
govern,  of  violent  passions  disciplined  with  difficulty,  of 
wild  and  tumultuous  desires  conquered  only  by  incessant 

*  De  Quincey  says  that  when  Wordsworth  was  thirty-nine  his  age  was 
guessed  at  over  sixty. 


44       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

vigilance.  He  bore  upon  himself  the  marks  of  a  difficult 
life,  and  it  was  a  touch  of  genuine  insight  which  led  Cole- 
ridge to  describe  him  by  the  brief  and  pregnant  phrase — 
an  "ever-enduring  man." 

The  picture  which  Harriet  Martineau  gives  of  Words- 
worth as  she  knew  him  in  his  old  age  does  not  err  on  the 
side  of  adulation,  but  it  cannot  conceal  the  essential  noble- 
ness of  his  character.  Harriet  Martineau  thought  little 
of  his  writings,  and  says  so  with  caustic  frankness. 
According  to  her  view — the  view  be  it  remembered  of  an 
incessantly  busy  woman — Wordsworth  suffered  from  hav- 
ing nothing  to  do;  and  he  suffered  yet  more  in  his  old  age 
from  the  adulation  of  the  crowd  of  visitors  who  poured 
toward  Rydal  Mount  during  the  tourist  season.  To  each 
of  these  idle  visitors,  and  they  averaged  five  hundred  a 
season,  Wordsworth  behaved  much  in  the  same  way.  He 
politely  showed  them  round  his  grounds,  explained  at  what 
particular  spot  certain  poems  were  written,  and  then 
politely  bowed  them  out.  He  had  no  reticence  either  in 
reciting  his  poems  or  talking  of  them;  indeed,  he  often 
spoke  of  them  in  an  impersonal  sort  of  way,  as  though 
they  had  no  relation  to  himself,  and  he  criticised  them  as 
freely  as  though  some  one  else  had  written  them.  Thus 
he  told  Harriet  Martineau  that  the  "Happy  Warrior"  did 
not  "best  fulfill  the  conditions  of  poetry,  but  it  was  a 
chain  of  extremely  valooable  thoughts,"  a  criticism  which 
Miss  Martineau  indorses  as  "eminently  just."  In  these, 
and  in  many  similar  proceedings,  we  recognize  the  naive 
simplicity  of  the  man  He  solemnly  advised  Miss  Marti- 
neau to  give  nothing  but  tea  to  her  visitors,  and  if  they 
wanted  meat  let  them  pay  for  it  themselves,  that  having 
been  his  own  method  of  proceeding  in  his  early  days  of 


Wordsworth's  Personal  Characteristics      45 

penury  at  Grasmere.  That  this  frugal  suggestion  did  not 
spring  from  any  inhospitable  meanness  is  abundantly  evi- 
dent from  the  larger  generosities  of  Wordsworth's  life. 
His  treatment  of  poor  Hartley  Coleridge  is  above  praise. 
Miss  Martineau  met  Hartley  only  five  times,  and  on  each 
occasion  he  was  drunk.  Wordsworth  treated  him  as  an 
erring  son,  and  when  all  hope  of  reclaiming  him  was  over, 
paid  for  his  lodgings,  cared  for  his  wants,  and  smoothed 
his  passage  to  the  grave.  There  are  few  more  touching 
pictures  than  that  of  the  old  poet  standing  bareheaded  by 
the  grave  of  Hartley  on  the  bleak  winter  morning  when 
all  that  was  mortal  of  that  unhappy  genius  was  laid  to  rest 
in  the  quiet  God's-acre  which  was  soon  to  receive  the  dust 
of  Wordsworth. 

An  equally  beautiful  picture  is  painted  by  Miss  Marti- 
neau of  the  poet  as  she  often  met  him,  "attended  perhaps 
by  half  a  score  of  cottagers'  children,  the  youngest  pulling 
at  his  cloak  or  holding  by  his  trousers,  while  he  cut  ash 
switches  out  of  the  hedge  for  them."  This  little  touch  of 
nature  may  be  paired  off  with  Mr.  Rawnsley's  story  of 
how  a  pastor  in  a  far-away  parish  was  asked  by  a  very 
refined,  handsome-looking  woman  on  her  death-bed  to  read 
over  to  her  and  to  her  husband  the  poem  of  "The  Pet 
Lamb,"  and  how  she  had  said  at  the  end,  "That  was 
written  about  me;  Mr.  Wordsworth  often  spoke  to  me, 
and  patted  my  head  when  a  child,"  and  had  added  with 
a  sigh,  "Eh,  but  he  was  such  a  dear  kind  old  man!" 
Miss  Martineau  also  strongly  confirms  the  impression  of 
Wordsworth's  isolation  from  the  main  streams  of  life,  the 
solitary  self-containedness  of  his  character,  when  she  says 
that  his  life  was  "self-enclosed,"  and  that  he  had  scarcely 
any  intercourse  with  other  minds,  in  books  or  conversation. 


46       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Another  source  of  information  about  Wordsworth  is 
found  in  the  reminiscences  of  him  among  the  peasantry, 
which  have  been  so  excellently  collated  by  Mr.  Rawnsley. 
These  have  a  unique  value  as  the  only  record  we  possess 
of  the  impression  which  Wordsworth  created,  not  on  culti- 
vated minds,  but  on  the  minds  of  the  simple  dales-people 
whose  virtues  he  so  strenuously  sang.  The  northern  mind 
has  two  distinguishing  qualities — a  certain  quickness  of 
imagination  which  finds  expression  in  the  use  of  singularly 
vivid  phrases,  and  a  certain  shrewd  touch  of  humor  which 
delights  in  exaggerative  travesty.  Making  allowance  for 
these  conditions,  we  may  construct  a  remarkably  lifelike 
portrait  from  these  observations  of  Wordsworth's  humble 
neighbors.  We  are  face  to  face  with  Wordsworth  in  the 
prime  of  his  power  and  force,  when  we  are  told  he  was 
"a  plainish-faaced  man,  but  a  fine  man  leish  [active],  and 
almost  always  upon  the  road.  He  wasn't  a  man  of  many 
words,  would  walk  by  you  times  enuff  wi'out  sayin'  owt, 
specially  when  he  was  in  study.  He  was  always  a-study- 
ing,  and  you  might  see  his  lips  a-goin'  as  he  went  along 
the  road."  Another  speaks  of  him  as  "a  vara  practical- 
eyed  man,  a  man  as  seemed  to  see  aw  that  was  stirrinV 
He  walked  in  later  days  with  "a  bit  of  a  stoop,"  which 
somewhat  diminished  the  sense  of  his  real  height,  which 
was  about  six  feet.  When  he  was  making  a  poem,  "he 
would  set  his  head  a  bit  forward,  and  put  his  hands  behint 
his  back.  And  then  he  would  start  a-bumming,  and  it 
was  bum,  bum,  bum,  stop;  and  then  he'd  set  down,  and 
git  a  bit  o'  paper  out,  and  write  a  bit.  However,  his  lips 
were  always  goan'  whoale  time  he  was  upon  gress  walk. 
He  was  a  kind  mon,  there's  no  two  words  about  that;  if 
any  one  was  sick  i'  the  plaace,  he  wad  be  off  to  see  til' 


Wordsworth's  Personal  Characteristics      47 

'em."  His  only  recreations  were  walking  and  skating. 
He  was  first  upon  the  ice,  and 

Wheeled  about 

Proud  and  exulting  like  an  untired  horse, 
That  cares  not  for  his  home. 

He  had  very  little  care  for  personal  appearance.  He  usu- 
ally wore  a  wide-awake  and  an  old  blue  cloak.  "Niver  seed 
him  in  a  boxer  in  my  life,"  says  one  witness,  with  pathetic 
reproach.  He  had  even  been  known  to  ride  in  a  dung- 
cart  upon  his  longer  excursions:  "Just  a  dung-cart,  wi'  a 
seat-board  in  front,  and  bit  o'  bracken  in  t'  bottom,  com- 
fortable as  owt."  He  had  a  deep  bass  voice,  and  when 
he  was  "bumming"  away  in  some  remote  part  at  nightfall, 
the  casual  passenger  was  almost  terrified.  He  constituted 
himself  by  common  consent  general  custodian  of  the 
beauties  of  the  district,  and  prevented  many  a  copse  from 
being  cut  down  and  superintended  the  building  of  many 
a  cottage.  Not  a  companionable  man,  however — a 
remoteness  about  him  which  awed  men  rather  than 
attracted  them.  Indeed,  their  one  complaint  about  him 
was,  that  he  had  no  convivial  tendencies,  like  Hartley 
Coleridge,  who  came  very  much  nearer  the  rustic  ideal  of 
a  poet  than  the  solitary  of  Rydal  Mount.  He  was  "a 
desolate-minded  man;  as  for  his  habits,  he  had  noan; 
niver  knew  him  with  a  pot  i'  his  hand  or  a  pipe  i'  his 
mouth."  He  "was  not  lovable  in  the  faace,  by  noa 
means" — the  face  was  too  rugged  and  austere  to  be  fasci- 
nating. So  one  rustic  observer  after  another  bears  his 
witness,  the  net  result  being  a  sufficiently  luminous  picture 
of  a  strong  and  somewhat  taciturn  man,  buried  in  his  own 
thoughts,  passing  up  and  down  among  his  fellows  with  a 


48       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

certain  awe-inspiring  unapproachableness,  and  yet  a  man 
of  warm  heart  and  quick  sympathy;  not  a  cheerful  man, 
but  a  man  who,  after  long  battle,  has  won  the  secret  of 
peace,  and  walks  a  solitary  path,  clothed  with  silence  and 
winning  from  others  the  reverence  due  to  the  hermit  and 
the  sage. 

Stiff  and  awkward  as  Wordsworth  often  was  in  con- 
versation, yet  there  were  times  when  he  created  a  sincere 
admiration  by  his  talk.  Haydon  says:  "Never  did  any 
man  so  beguile  the  time  as  Wordsworth.  His  purity  of 
heart,  his  kindness,  his  soundness  of  principle,  his  infor- 
mation, his  knowledge,  and  the  intense  and  eager  feelings 
with  which  he  pours  forth  all  he  knows  affect,  interest, 
and  enchant  one."  But  among  all  the  various  literary 
portraits  which  we  possess  of  Wordsworth,  there  is  none 
so  subtle  and  so  potent  as  Carlyle's.  Carlyle  thought  little 
of  Wordsworth's  writings,  but  after  he  had  met  him  he 
says:  "He  talked  well  in  his  way;  with  veracity,  easy 
brevity,  and  force.  His  voice  was  good,  frank,  sonorous; 
though  practically  clear,  distinct,  forcible,  rather  than 
melodious;  the  tone  of  him  business-like,  sedately  confi- 
dent, no  discourtesy,  yet  no  anxiety  about  being  courteous; 
a  fine  wholesome  rusticity,  fresh  as  his  mountain  breezes, 
sat  well  on  the  stalwart  veteran,  and  on  all  he  said  and 
did.  You  would  .have  said  he  was  a  usually  taciturn  man, 
glad  to  unlock  himself,  to  audience  sympathetic  and  intelli- 
gent, when  such  offered  itself.  His  face  bore  marks  of 
much,  not  always  peaceful,  meditation;  the  look  of  it  not 
bland  or  benevolent  so  much  as  close,  impregnable,  and 
hard;  a  man  multa  tacere  loquive paratus,  in  a  world  where 
he  had  experienced  no  lack  of  contradictions  as  he  strode 
along.  The  eyes  were  not  very  brilliant,  but  they  had  a 


Wordsworth's  Personal  Characteristics      49 

quiet  clearness;  there  was  enough  of  brow,  and  well 
shaped.  He  was  large-boned,  lean,  but  still  firm-knit, 
tall,  and  strong-looking  when  he  stood;  a  right  good  old 
steel-gray  figure,  with  a  fine  rustic  simplicity  and  dignity 
about  him,  and  a  veracious  strength  looking  through  him, 
which  might  have  suited  one  of  those  old  steel-gray  Mark- 
grafs  whom  Henry  the  Fowler  set  up  to  ward  the 
marches  and  do  battle  with  the  intrusive  heathen  in  a 
stalwart  and  judicious  manner."  The  last  phrase  recalls  to 
us  Wordsworth's  confession  in  the  "Prelude"  to  his  early 
love  of  battle  histories  and  thirst  for  a  life  of  heroic 
action.  A  man  who  had  not  had  something  of  the  fighter 
in  him  could  never  have  defied  the  world  as  he  defied  it. 
His  imaginative  faculty  made  him  a  poet;  but  under  all 
his  intellectual  life  there  throbbed  the  difficult  pulse  of  a 
valorous  restlessness,  and  he  had  in  him  the  pith  and  sinew 
of  the  hero.  Poets  have  too  often  been  the  victims  of 
their  own  sensitiveness,  but  Wordsworth  stands  among 
them  as  a  man  of  stubborn  strength,  an  altogether  sturdy 
and  unsubduable  man.  "Out  of  this  sense  of  loneliness," 
a  friend  once  wrote  to  Harriet  Martineau,  "shall  grow 
your  strength,  as  the  oak,  standing  alone,  grows  and 
strengthens  with  the  storm;  whilst  the  ivy,  clinging  for 
protection  to  the  old  temple  wall,  has  no  power  of  self- 
support."  Doubtless  the  loneliness  of  Wordsworth's  life 
fed  his  strength,  and  no  finer  image  than  that  of  the  oak 
could  be  found  to  describe  the  resolute  vigor  of  Words- 
worth's character.  He  certainly  was  no  weak  spray  of  ivy 
clinging  to  a  temple  wall;  but  he  never  forgot  the  temple 
and  its  sanctities  notwithstanding;  and  if  he  was  an  oak, 
it  was  an  oak  that  had  its  roots  in  sacred  soil  and  cast  the 
shadow  of  its  branches  on  the  doorways  of  the  sanctuary. 


50      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  Why  is  the  material  relating  to  Wordsworth's  personal 
life  somewhat  meager? 

2.  How  was  he  regarded  by  the  different  members  of  the 
Lake  school  of  poets? 

3.  What  did  his  contemporaries  say  of  his  seriousness  and 
intensity  of  character? 

4.  What  qualities  of  Wordsworth  are  shown  in  his  treat- 
ment of  Hartley  Coleridge? 

5.  What  incidents  illustrate  his  kindly  relations  with  chil- 
dren? 

6.  How  is  his  personality  described  by  the  peasantry  among 
whom  he  lived? 

7.  What  pictures  are  given  of  him  by  Haydon  and  Carlyle? 

8.  In  what  respects  is  the  oak  a  fine  image  of  Wordsworth's 
character? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ward's  English  Poets.  Vol.  IV.  Essay  by  R.  W.  Church, 
and  Selections. 

Wordsworth.  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  (English  Men  of  Letters 
Series.) 

Literary  Associations  of  the  English  Lakes.  H.  D.  Rawnsley. 

Studies  in  Poetry  and  Philosophy.  (Wordsworth,  the  poet 
and  the  man.)  J.  C.  Shairp. 

Biographia  Literaria.     Coleridge.    (Bohn  Library.) 

Recollections  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth.    De  Quincey. 


CHAPTER   VI 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH— CONCLUDING 
SURVEY 

It  is  evident  to  the  reader  who  has  followed  this  imper- 
fect study  of  Wordsworth  with  any  degree  of  care  that 
his  merits  and  defects  are  alike  great,  and  in  concluding 
our  survey  it  is  well  to  recapitulate  them.  In  few  poets 
are  the  profound  and  trivial  found  in  such  close  proximity, 
and  this  is  his  chief  defect.  Like  Browning,  for  many 
years  Wordsworth  had  few  readers,  and  consequently 
wrote  more  for  his  own  pleasure  than  with  the  artistic 
restraint  and  carefulness  which  the  sense  of  public  praise 
and  criticism  impose.  Such  criticism  as  he  received  was 
little  better  than  insane  or  spiteful  vituperation,  and  its 
only  effect  was  to  increase  in  a  man  of  Wordsworth's 
temperament  a  stubborn  dependence  on  himself.  It  is 
hard  to  say  which  acts  with  worse  effect  upon  a  poet,  the 
adulation  of  an  undiscerning  or  the  apathy  of  an  indiffer- 
ent public.  It  seems  likely,  however,  that  if  Wordsworth 
had  received  any  public  encouragement  early  in  life,  it 
would  have  acted  beneficially,  in  leading  him  to  perceive 
his  own  faults  of  style,  and  perhaps  to  correct  them. 
There  are  various  passages  in  Wordsworth's  letters  which 
prove  that,  while  he  braced  himself  to  endure  public  hos- 
tility with  uncomplaining  stoicism,  yet  he  would  not  the 
less  have  valued  public  encouragement.  But  as  years 
wore  away,  and  his  circle  of  readers  still  continued  to  be 


52       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

of  the  narrowest,  he  cared  less  and  less  to  write  with  any 
definite  attempt  to  gain  the  public  ear.  He  wrote  for  his 
own  delectation,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  often  attached  false 
values  to  his  poems.  He  failed,  as  every  solitary  writer 
must  fail,  to  discriminate  between  the  perfect  and  imperfect 
work  of  his  genius.  The  result  is,  that  to-day  the  perfect 
work  of  Wordsworth  is  hampered  by  its  association  with 
the  imperfect.  His  readers  often  fail  to  take  a  just  meas- 
urement of  the  noble  qualities  of  his  genius,  because  it  is 
so  easy  for  them  to  pass  from  his  greatest  poems  to  pas- 
sages of  verse-writing  which  are  dull,  trivial,  bald,  and  in 
every  way  unworthy  of  him.  This  fact  has  been  amply 
recognized  by  Matthew  Arnold,  and  he  has  endeavored  to 
remedy  the  defect  by  his  admirable  selection  from  the 
works  of  Wordsworth.  Few  poets  bear  the  process  of 
selection  so  well,  and  certainly  none  have  so  much  to  gain 
by  it. 

There  is  something  of  pathos,  indeed,  in  the  recollec- 
tion of  the  relation  which  Wordsworth  bore  to  the  litera- 
ture of  his  day.  He  came  in  the  wake  of  Byron,  and 
uttered  a  note  so  different  that  it  is  scarcely  surprising 
that  the  multitude  who  read  Byron  had  no  ear  for  Words- 
worth. For  every  thousand  who  bought  "Childe  Harold" 
there  was  perhaps  one  who  bought  the  "Lyrical  Ballads." 
When  contempt  and  hostility  had  slowly  passed  into  grate- 
ful recognition,  his  fame  was  menaced  from  another  quarter. 
By  that  time  Tennyson  was  making  himself  heard,  and 
Tennyson  soon  passed  Wordsworth  in  the  race  for  fame. 
Wordsworth  never  knew  the  joy  of  unrivaled  and  indis- 
putable pre-eminence.  His  star  rose  unperceived  in  the 
firmament  where  Byron  reigned  in  splendor,  and  before 
the  fading  afterglow  of  Byron  had  left  a  space  for  his 


William    Wordsworth — Concluding  Survey     53 

modest  light  to  spread,  it  was  again  eclipsed  by  the  grow- 
ing beams  of  Tennyson.  The  one  poet  had  the  vehement 
personality,  and  the  other  the  rich  and  ornate  style,  which 
Wordsworth  lacked.  Each  appealed  to  the  popular  ear 
as  he  did  not;  the  one  with  a  more  masterful,  the  other 
with  a  more  musical,  note.  It  seemed  part  of  the  irony 
of  fate  that  Wordsworth  should  nurture  his  heart  in  soli- 
tary endurance  to  the  end,  and  should  never  know  what  it 
was  to  reap  the  full  harvest  of  his  toils.  Perhaps  also 
there  is  a  law  of  compensation  at  work  which  has  insured 
to  Wordsworth  a  more  solid  fame  than  Byron  seems  likely 
to  enjoy  or  Tennyson  is  likely  to  attain.  The  sureness 
which  we  usually  associate  with  slowness  has  certainly 
marked  the  growth  of  Wordsworth's  fame;  and  it  may  be 
confidently  said  that  at  no  period  since  the  appearance  of 
the  "Lyrical  Ballads"  has  Wordsworth  been  so  widely 
read  as  now.  Can  as  much  be  said  of  Byron?  Will  as 
much  be  said  in  a  hundred  years  of  Tennyson  ?  Of  Byron 
at  least  it  is  true  that  he  has  decreased  while  Wordsworth 
has  increased.  While  the  star  of  Byron  has  gradually 
receded,  the  star  of  Wordsworth  has  risen  into  dominance 
and  burns  with  an  enduring  and  immitigable  flame.  If 
the  verdict  of  universal  criticism  goes  for  anything,  it  is 
clear  that  Wordsworth  has  come  to  stop. 

There  are,  of  course,  some  dissentients  to  this  judg- 
ment, but  one  hardly  pays  much  attention  nowadays  to 
the  erratic  criticisms  of  Mr.  Swinburne,  and  still  less  to 
Mr.  Oscar  Wilde  when  he  writes  contemptuously  of  "Mr. 
Wordsworth,"  or  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  when  he  is  good 
enough  to  inform  us  that  he  does  not  care  "very  much  for 
Mr.  William  Wordsworth."  These  are  merely  the  small 
impertinences  of  criticism,  meant  to  excite  laughter,  but 


54       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

likelier  to  inspire  contempt,  and  in  no  case  worthy  of  any 
serious  resentment.  Nor  can  one  quarrel  seriously  with 
so  genial  a  humorist  as  Edward  Fitzgerald,  when  he  is 
provoked  by  the  almost  irritating  respectability  of  Words- 
worth to  write  of  him  as  "my  daddy."  It  is  more  to  the 
purpose  to  recollect  that  Coleridge  placed  Wordsworth 
"nearest  of  all  modern  writers  to  Shakespeare  and  Milton, 
yet  in  a  kind  perfectly  unborrowed  and  his  own."  If  this 
be  regarded  as  the  unconsidered  praise  of  enthusiastic 
friendship,  we  have  also  to  recollect  that  Matthew  Arnold, 
who  was  always  frugal  in  his  praise,  and  never  guilty  of 
untempered  adulation,  has  practically  indorsed  this  ver- 
dict. With  Shakespeare  and  Milton  he  will  not  compare 
him,  but  next  to  these  august  names  he  ranks  Wordsworth 
as  the  man  who  has  contributed  most  to  the  permanent 
wealth  of  English  poetry  since  the  Elizabethan  age.  Nor 
does  Mr.  John  Morley,  the  latest  critic  of  Wordsworth, 
contest  the  justice  of  this  criticism.  He  cannot  grant  him 
Shakespeare's  vastness  of  compass,  nor  Milton's  sublimity, 
nor  Dante's  "ardent  force  of  vision";  but  he  admits 
Wordsworth's  right  to  comparison,  and  admirably  states 
Wordsworth's  peculiar  gift  when  he  says:  "What  Words- 
worth does  is  to  assuage,  to  reconcile,  to  fortify.  Words- 
worth, at  any  rate,  by  his  secret  of  bringing  the  infinite 
into  common  life,  as  he  invokes  it  out  of  common  life,  has 
the  skill  to  lead  us,  so  long  as  we  yield  ourselves  to  his 
influence,  into  inner  moods  of  settled  peace;  to  touch  'the 
depth  and  not  the  tumult  of  the  soul';  to  give  us  quiet- 
ness, strength,  steadfastness,  and  purpose,  whether  to  do 
or  to  endure."  He  would  be  a  daring  man  who  contested 
a  verdict  indorsed  by  the  three  most  eminent  names  of 
modern  criticism,  and  it  is  pretty  safe  to  assume  that  on  all 


William  Wordsworth — Concluding  Survey     55 

the  main  issues  this  verdict  is  decisive,  and  is  not  likely  to 
be  seriously  impugned. 

Any  final  survey  ot  Wordsworth's  work  would  be  in- 
complete without  mention  of  what  may,  after  all,  be  taken 
as  his  noblest  single  poem,  the  "Ode  on  Intimations  of 
Immortality  from  Recollections  of  Early  Childhood." 
This  poem  was  written  when  Wordsworth  was  at  the 
prime  of  his  powers  (1803-6),  and  is  rich  in  his  peculiar 
excellences.  It  also  sums  up  much  that  is  most  charac- 
teristic in  his  philosophy.  The  starting-point  of  his 
philosophy  is,  that  man  has  in  himself  all  the  elements  of 
perfect  life,  if  he  will  but  learn  how  to  adjust  himself  to 
the  environment  in  which  he  finds  himself: 

The  Child  is  father  of  the  Man, 

I  could  wish  my  days  to  be 

Bound  each  to  each  in  natural  piety. 

The  evils  of  life  spring  from  the  perverse  disregard  of 
his  true  instincts,  to  which  man  is  prone.  The  child  loves 
nature,  and  is  happiest  in  contact  with  nature,  and  it  is  for 
that  reason  Wordsworth  urges  the  absolute  need  for  com- 
munion with  nature  in  the  perfect  human  life.  In  the 
natural  instincts  of  the  child's  heart  we  have,  if  we  only 
knew  it,  the  true  indications  of  the  highest  possible  devel- 
opment of  human  nature.  They  are  the  pointer  stars  by 
which  we  can  measure  the  firmament  of  human  life  and 
ascertain  the  true  bearings  and  infinite  courses  of  human 
destiny.  But  behind  this  assumption  another  question 
lies.  We  ask,  what  is  there  to  prove  to  us  that  these 
instincts  are  right,  and  whence  do  they  spring?  The 
answer  to  this  question  Wordsworth  gives  in  this  great 
ode.  As  usual,  he  probes  the  mystic  depths  of  his  own 


56       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

experiences,  and  from  that  depth  rescues  the  clue  which 
interprets  to  him  the  whole  mystery  and  circumference  of 
human  destiny.  He  tells  us  that  as  a  child  he  had  no 
notion  of  death,  nor  could  he  bring  himself  to  realize  it  as 
a  state  applicable  to  his  own  being.  He  felt  within  him- 
self the  movements  of  a  spirit  that  knew  nothing  of  decay 
or  death.  He  even  felt  it  difficult  to  realize  the  fact  of 
an  external  world,  so  absorbed  was  he  in  the  rapture 
of  idealism.  "Many  times,"  he  says,  "while  going  to 
school,  have  I  grasped  at  a  wall  or  tree  to  recall  myself 
from  this  abyss  of  idealism  to  the  reality.  At  that  time 
I  was  afraid  of  such  processes.  In  later  periods  of  life  I 
have  deplored,  as  we  have  all  reason  to  do,  a  subjugation 
of  an  opposite  character,  and  have  rejoiced  over  the  re- 
membrances," as  is  expressed  in  the  lines: 

Obstinate  questionings 
Of  sense  and  outward  things, 
Fallings  from  us,  vanishings, 
Blank  misgivings  of  a  Creature, 

Moving  about  in  worlds  not  recognized, 
High  instincts,  before  which  our  mortal  nature 

Did  tremble  like  a  guilty  Thing  surprised. 

He  recalls  the  "dream-like  vividness  and  splendor  which 
invests  objects  of  sight  in  childhood,"  and  then  asks, 
what  is  the  interpretation  of  this  sense  of  wonder  and 
strangeness  which  is  the  earliest  recollection  of  childhood 
in  the  presence  of  external  nature?  His  reply  is,  that  in 
the  child's  spiritual  aloofness  from  the  world,  in  his  sense 
of  the  foreignness  of  life  as  he  finds  it,  is  the  intimation  of 
his  previous  existence  in  the  purer  realms  of  spirit,  and 
of  his  ultimate  return  to  a  spiritual  existence.  He  is  a 
spirit  clothed  with  fleshy  apparel  for  a  moment,  but  im- 


William  Wordsworth — Concluding  Survey     57 

mortal  in  himself,  and  moving  through  the  darkened  ways 
of  mortality  with  the  primal  fire  of  immortality  burning  in 
his  heart,  and  trembling  upward  to  the  source  from  which 
it  sprang.  The  world  is  his  prison-house,  and  the  great 
end  of  life  is  not  to  be  reconciled  to  the  prison-house,  but 
to  retain  and  strengthen  the  divine  desires  which  haunt 
him  with  the  sense  of  something  lost  and  something 
higher.  Mere  shadowy  recollections  they  may  be,  and 
yet  they  are 

The  fountain  light  of  all  our  day, 
Are  yet  a  master  light  of  all  our  seeing  ; 

Uphold  us,  cherish,  and  have  power  to  make 
Our  noisy  years  seem  moments  in  the  being 
Of  the  eternal  silence  ;  truths  that  wake 

To  perish  never  ; 
Which  neither  listlessness,  nor  mad  endeavor, 

Nor  Man  nor  Boy, 
Nor  all  that  is  at  enmity  with  joy 
Can  utterly  abolish  or  destroy! 

This  poem  is  the  noblest  of  all  testimony  to  the  profound 
religiousness  of  Wordsworth's  spirit.  It  breathes  some- 
thing more  than  the  peace,  it  trembles  with  the  rapture  of 
the  loftiest  piety.  It  purges,  it  transforms,  it  exalts  us. 
We  catch  a  spiritual  glow  as  we  listen,  we  see  before  us 
the  unfolding  vision  of  glory  beyond  glory,  such  as  he 
saw  who  stood  on  Patmos  and  beheld  the  heavens  opened, 
and  the  infinite  cycles  of  immeasurable  divine  purposes 
fulfilling  themselves.  Prisoners  though  we  be,  stifled  in  a 
world  of  sense,  weighed  upon  with  fetters  of  ignoble  cus- 
tom, yet  as  we  climb  the  solitary  peak  of  contemplation 
where  Wordsworth  stands  like  a  seer  lost  in  vision — 


58       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Our  souls  have  sight  of  that  immortal  sea 

Which  brought  us  thither, 

Can  in  a  moment  travel  hither, 
And  see  the  children  sport  upon  the  shore, 
And  hear  the  mighty  waters  rolling  evermore. 

And  last,  it  may  be  noted  that  in  literary  finish  and  preg- 
nancy of  phrase  Wordsworth  never  surpassed  this  poem. 
It  marks  the  complete  culmination  of  his  power.  Phrase 
after  phrase,  such  as, 

Faith  that  looks  through  death, 

In  years  that  bring  the  philosophic  mind  ; 

or, 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting  ; 

or, 

To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears, 

has  passed  into  the  currency  of  literature  unnoticed,  by 
reason  of  some  unforgettable  quality  of  thought  or  expres- 
sion which  stamps  itself  upon  the  universal  memory. 
Longer  poems,  full  of  passages  of  memorable  insight  or 
emotion,  Wordsworth  has  written,  but  his  great  qualities 
find  no  nobler  display  than  in  this  poem.  Nowhere  does 
he  more  nearly  approach  to  "Milton's  sublime  and  unflag- 
ging strength  and  Dante's  severe,  vivid,  ardent  force  of 
vision."  It  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  few  great  odes  of  Eng- 
lish literature,  and  is  in  itself  sufficient  to  give  Wordsworth 
rank  among  the  few  greatest  poets  who  stand  secure  above 
the  transience  of  human  taste — 

The  great  of  old, 

The  dead  but  sceptered  sov'reigns,  who  still  rule 
Our  spirits  from  their  urns. 


William  Wordsworth — Concluding  Survey     59 

Finally,  we  note  that  Wordsworth  is  not  the  poet  of 
youth,  but  of  maturity.  There  is  poetry,  as  there  is  art, 
which  does  not  dazzle  us  with  wealth  of  color,  but  which 
deals  in  cool  and  silvery  grays,  unnoticed  by  the  taste 
which  seeks  startling  and  sensational  effects,  but  infinitely 
refreshing  to  tired  eyes  which  have  long  since  turned  from 
the  sensational  in  resentment  and  something  of  disgust. 
Perhaps  it  is  not  until  we  have  been  surfeited  with  gaudy 
art  that  we  learn  fully  to  appreciate  this  very  different  art. 
Then  is  the  time  for  the  cool  gray;  then  it  is  that  these 
softer  and  soberer  tones  of  color  soothe  the  eye  and  satisfy 
the  brain.  It  is,  in  the  same  way,  precisely  when  the 
poets  of  our  youth  cease  to  allure  us  that  the  charm  of 
Wordsworth  begins  to  be  most  keenly  felt.  To  the  mature 
man,  who  has  wearied  of  the  theatrical  glitter  of  Byron, 
or  the  cloying  sweetness  of  Keats,  Wordsworth  comes  like 
the  presence  of  Nature  herself.  He  does  not  captivate  the 
taste  with  casual  brilliance,  but  he  subdues  it  with  a  sense 
of  infinite  tranquillity  and  refreshment.  He  satisfies  the 
heart,  he  inspires  and  stimulates  the  thought.  We  read 
him  not  once,  but  many  times,  and  as  life  advances  we 
find  that  he  is  one  of  the  few  poets  we  need  not  cast  aside. 
He  ennobles  and  invigorates  us.  He  advances  with  us  as 
we  pass  into  those  shadows  which  lie  about  the  doorways 
of  mortality,  and  his  voice  never  falters  in  its  encourage- 
ment and  pious  hope.  He  becomes  to  us  more  than  a 
poet — he  is  our  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend ;  and  when 
many  other  guides  of  youth  are  shaken  off,  the  mature 
mind  grows  more  and  more  sympathetic  to  Wordsworth, 
and  finds  in  him  a  spiritual  comradeship  such  as  no  other 
poet  has  it  in  his  power  to  give. 


60       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  is  the  chief  defect  in  Wordsworth's  work  as  a 
whole,  and  to  what  circumstances  is  this  due? 

2.  How  was  his  recognition  hindered  by  his  nearness  to 
Byron  and  Tennyson? 

3.  Give  the  estimation  in  which  he  is  held  by  leading  modern 
critics. 

4.  What  is  his  greatest  poem,  and  what  the  starting-point 
of  its  philosophy? 

5.  Give  the  thought  underlying  the  poem. 

6.  In  what  respects  does  this  poem  mark  the  culmination  of 
Wordsworth's  power? 

7.  Why   is    Wordsworth    the  poet,    not   of   youth,  but   of 
maturity? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ward's  English  Poets.  Vol.  IV.  Essay  by  R.  H.  Church, 
and  Selections. 

Essays  in  Criticism.     Second  Series.     Matthew  Arnold. 

Wordsworth.  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  (English  Men  of  Letters 
Series.) 

Wordsworthiana.  Papers  read  to  the  Wordsworth  Society. 
Edited  by  Wm.  Knight. 

Literary  Studies.  (Wordsworth,  Tennyson  and  Browning.) 
Walter  Bagehot. 

Appreciations.    (Wordsworth.)     Walter  Pater. 


CHAPTER   VII 

LORD   TENNYSON— GENERAL   CHARACTER- 
ISTICS 

Born  at  Somersby,  Lincolnshire,  August  5,  1809.  "Poems  by 
Two  Brothers,"  published  by  J.  Jackson,  Louth,  1827. 
"  Poems,"  chiefly  lyrical,  published  1830.  "  Poems,"  in  two 
volumes  (Moxon),  1842.  The  "Princess,"  1847.  "In  Me- 
moriam,"  1850.  Became  Poet  Laureate  in  the  same  year. 
"Maud,"  1855.  The  "Idylls  of  the  King,"  1859;  completed 
1885.  "  Enoch  Arden,"  1864.  Offered  and  accepted  a 
Peerage,  1883. 

When  we  come  to  the  name  of  Tennyson  we  do  well 
to  pause,  for  in  his  many-sidedness  he  represents  more 
fully  than  any  other  poet  of  our  day  the  complex  thought 
and  activities  of  the  century  in  which  his  lot  has  been 
cast.  Seldom  has  a  poet's  fame  grown  more  slowly  or 
securely,  and  never  has  a  poet's  career  been  crowned  with 
a  larger  degree  of  worldly  success.  It  is  now  more  than 
half  a  century  since  his  first  slender  volume  of  poems 
appeared.  At  that  date  Christopher  North,  otherwise 
Professor  Wilson,  and  the  Edinburgh  reviewers  were  in 
the  full  heyday  of  their  power,  and  exercised  a  dominance 
in  criticism  which  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  understand  to-day. 
A  new  poet  in  those  days  had  to  fear  ridicule  more  than 
indifference,  a  position  which  may  now  be  said  to  be 
entirely  reversed.  By  turning  to  that  section  of  the  com- 
plete works  of  Tennyson  headed  Juvenilia,  we  can  our- 
selves judge  what  was  the  character  of  the  claim  which 

61 


62       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

the  young  poet  in  1830  made  upon  the  public  attention. 
The  volume  is  not  merely  slender  in  bulk,  but  equally 
slight  in  quality.  The  influence  of  Keats  is  apparent 
everywhere.  There  is  a  femininity  of  tone  and  a  sensu- 
ousness  of  word-painting  which  are  in  the  exact  manner  of 
Keats.  The  triviality  of  Keats's  worst  style  is  as  appar- 
ent as  the  magic  phrasing  of  his  best.  Take,  for  instance, 
this  stanza  from  "Claribel"— 

The  slumbrous  wave  outdwelleth, 

The  babbling  runnel  crispeth, 

The  hollow  grot  replieth, 

Where  Claribel  low-lieth. 

This  is  weak  with  the  peculiar  weakness  of  Keats;  the 
straining  after  effect  by  the  use  of  uncommon  and  affected 
forms  of  speech.  Nor  do  the  other  poems  in  the  little 
volume  rise  to  anything  like  a  high  average. 

There  are,  however,  splendid  indications  of  true  and 
genuine  power  amid  much  that  is  weak  and  imitative. 
"Mariana"  is  a  piece  of  powerful  painting,  done  with 
excellent  artistic  taste,  intention,  and  finish.  Finer  still 
is  the  "Recollections  of  the  Arabian  Nights."  It  is  rich, 
almost  too  rich  indeed,  in  its  coloring,  but  no  one  can  fail 
to  feel  the  charm  of  words  in  such  lines  as  these: 

At  night  my  shallop  rustling  thro' 

The  low  and  blooming  foliage,  drove 

The  fragrant  glistening  deeps,  and  clove 
The  citron-shadows  in  the  blue: 
By  garden-porches  on  the  brim, 

The  costly  doors  flung  open  wide, 
Gold  glittering   hrough  lamplight  dim, 

And  broidered  sofas  on  each  side; 
In  sooth  it  was  a  goodly  time, 
For  it  was  in  the  golden  prime 

Of  good  Haroun  Alraschid. 


Lord  Tennyson — General  Characteristics      63 

But  in  fineness  of  workmanship  and  depth  of  feeling  the 
"Deserted  House,"  the  "Dying  Swan,"  and  "Oriana," 
take  an  easy  precedence.  In  the  second  of  these  poems 
there  is  that  which  goes  farther  to  insure  a  poet  the  atten- 
tion of  the  public  than  anything  else — there  is  distinctive- 
ness  and  originality.  The  "Dying  Swan"  was  sufficient 
at  once  to  stamp  Tennyson  as  an  original  poet.  In  its 
perfectly  accurate  depiction  of  nature  it  may  remind  us 
somewhat  of  Wordsworth,  but  it  is  a  mere  suggestion, 
and  the  style  is  wholly  different.  Wordsworth's  has  been 
described  as  the  pure  style  in  poetry;  Tennyson's  as  the 
ornate.  The  bond  of  likeness  is  in  the  fidelity  of  each 
poet  to  the  actual  facts  of  nature.  Wordsworth  never 
drew  a  picture  of  mountain  solitude  or  lake  scenery  more 
simply  true  to  fact  than  the  picture  this  young  Lincoln- 
shire poet  gives  of  the  great  open  spaces  of  the  fen  coun- 
try, with  their  breadth  of  sky  and  far-stretching  solitude, 
which  is  almost  desolation,  and  their  gleaming  water- 
courses fretting  everywhere,  like  silver  threads,  the  waste 
of  green. 

The  plain  was  grassy,  wild,  and  bare, 

Wide,  wild,  and  open  to  the  air, 

Which  had  built  up  everywhere 

An  under-roof  of  doleful  gray. 

Ever  the  weary  wind  went  on, 
And  took  the  reed-tops  as  it  went. 

One  willow  o'er  the  river  wept 
And  shook  the  wave  as  the  wind  did  sigh; 

Above  in  the  wind  was  the  swallow, 
Chasing  itself  at  its  own  wild  will, 
And  far  thro'  the  marish  green,  and  still 

The  tangled  watercourses  slept, 
Shot  over  with  purple,  and  green,  and  yellow. 


64       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

The  sense  of  desolation  is  complete.  It  is  not  con- 
veyed to  the  mind  by  a  single  vivid  touch,  in  the  manner 
of  Wordsworth,  but  by  a  series  of  cumulative  effects, 
which  are  equally  striking.  It  is  not  wonderful  that  a 
poem  like  this  should  arrest  the  attention  of  a  mind  like 
Christopher  North's.  The  first  volume  of  a  poet  has 
rarely  contained  anything  so  full  of  conscious  strength, 
and  so  complete  in  its  mastery  of  the  art  of  poetry,  as  this 
pathetic  picture  of  the  dying  swan. 

Christopher  North — "rusty,  crusty  Christopher"  as 
Tennyson  afterward  called  him — was  perhaps  more  con- 
scious of  the  weakness  of  the  young  poet  than  of  his 
strength.  In  1832,  when  the  famous  "Blackwood" 
criticism  appeared,  Wordsworth  was  still  a  rock  of  offense 
to  the  critics,  and  gibes  and  insult  had  not  yet  ceased  to 
follow  him  to  his  solitude  at  Grasmere.  Seven  years  were 
to  elapse  before  Oxford  was  to  recognize  his  greatness, 
eleven  years  before  the  laureateship  was  his.  It  was  an 
unpropitious  hour  for  poets.  There  had  come  a  great 
ebb-tide  in  poetry,  perhaps  a  natural  result  of  that  extraor- 
dinary outburst  of  lyric  splendor  with  which  the  names 
of  Shelley  and  Keats  are  associated.  Robert  Southey  was 
laureate,  and  an  age  which  had  enthroned  Southey  as 
laureate  might  well  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  voice  of  Tenny- 
son. Upon  the  whole  it  is  greatly  to  the  credit  of  Profes- 
sor Wilson  that  he  had  discrimination  enough  to  see 
anything  at  all  in  the  humble  volume  of  poems  by  Alfred 
Tennyson,  which  was  sent  him  for  review;  and  he  took 
occasion  to  give  the  young  poet  some  excellent  advice,  for 
which  he  had  the  humility  and  discernment  to  be  thankful. 

The  cardinal  error  of  these  early  poems  Professor  Wil- 
son was  keen  enough  to  discern  at  once.  It  was  what  he 


Lord  Tennyson — General  Characteristics      65 

called  "puerility."  There  was  a  sort  of  unwholesome 
sadness  about  them,  a  distasteful  melancholy,  a  mawkish- 
ness  of  tone  and  subject.  It  may  be  added,  that  the  note 
of  restrained  and  tender  melancholy  has  always  been  one 
of  the  chief  features  of  Tennyson's  poetry.  It  is  not 
obtrusive,  but  it  is  pervasive;  it  is  rarely  bitter  or  synical, 
but  it  is  always  there.  It  is  apparent  in  the  choice  of 
subject,  even  in  these  early  poems.  Death  and  change 
strike  the  keynote  of  the  volume.  Mariana  "in  the 
moated  grange"  cries — 

I  am  aweary,  aweary, 
Would  God  that  I  were  dead! 

One  of  the  sweetest  of  the  songs  is — 
Of  the  mouldering  flowers; 

The  air  is  damp,  and  hushed,  and  close, 
As  a  sick  man's  room  when  he  taketh  repose 
An  hour  before  death. 

The  fine  ballad  of  "Oriana"  is  a  ballad  of  death,  and 
the  "Dying  Swan,"  although  it  rises  into  a  voice  of  noble 
music  in  its  close,  is  nevertheless  a  poem  of  desolation  and 
sorrow.  And  over  and  above  all  this,  a  large  part  of  the 
volume,  no  fewer  than  five  poems  indeed,  are  devoted  to 
the  depiction  of  various  types  of  womanhood.  Sweetness 
there  is  in  the  volume,  but  not  strength;  and  the  sweet- 
ness is  cloying  rather  than  piercing.  It  is  not  the  voice 
of  the  strong  and  hopeful  man,  but  of  the  poet  touched 
with  an  incurable  melancholy  of  thought  and  outlook. 
Yet  if  melancholy  strikes  the  keynote  of  the  whole,  it  is 
not  less  true  that  the  melody  is  really  new  and  striking. 
The  first  poem  bears  the  under-title  of  "A  Melody,"  and 


66       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

in  the  word  Tennyson  shows  an  exact  appreciation  of  his 
own  powers.  Melodious  he  always  is.  No  poet  has  ever 
had  a  profounder  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  metrical  music. 
It  is  the  melody  of  his  phrase  that  carries  it  home  to  the 
memory,  not  less  than  its  felicity.  Any  student  of  Tenny- 
son can  recall  at  will  scores  of  lines  which  cling  to  the 
memory  by  the  charm  of  their  own  exquisite  music. 

Take  such  examples  as  these — 

From  "Tithonus": 

While  Ilion  like  a  mist  rose  into  towers. 

From  "Ulysses": 

And  drunk  delight  of  battle  with  my  peers 
Far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy. 

From  the  "Princess": 

Myriads  of  rivulets  hurrying  thro'  the  lawn, 
The  moan  of  doves  in  immemorial  elms, 
And  murmuring  of  innumerable  bees. 

In  these  last  lines  there  is  an  overpowering  imaginative 
charm,  something  almost  magical  in  its  bewitchment, 
which  makes  us  think  of  the  words  of  Keats,  that  to  him 
a  fine  phrase  was  an  intoxicating  delight.  It  is  melody, 
the  finest  and  most  magical  melody  of  which  words  are 
capable.  There  is  nothing  in  the  early  poems  of  Tenny- 
son to  match  such  exquisite  phrasing  as  this,  but  there  are 
nevertheless  sure  indications  of  where  the  real  power  of 
the  poet  lay.  It  was  the  advent  of  an  intensely  artistic 
mind,  palpitatingly  alive  to  the  vision  and  power  of 
beauty,  touched  with  the  artist's  ecstasy,  and  with  the 
artist's  corresponding  melancholy,  keen,  subtle,  delicately 
poised,  possessing  the  secret  of  loveliness  rather  than  of 


Lord  Tennyson — General  Characteristics      67 

rude  vigor;  it  was  the  advent  of  such  a  mind  into  the 
world  of  English  poetry  which  was  signalized  by  that 
slender  volume  of  Poems  by  Alfred  Tennyson,  published 
in  1830. 

But  bright  as  were  the  indications  of  poetic  genius  in 
the  earliest  work  of  Tennyson,  few  could  have  dared  to 
augur  from  them  the  height  of  excellence  to  which  the 
poet  has  now  attained.  A  yet  severer  critic  than  Wilson 
was  Lockhart,  who  reviewed  the  1833  poems  in  the  Quar- 
terly Review  of  that  year,  and  it  is  noticeable  that  almost 
every  suggestion  of  Lockhart  was  thereafter  adopted  by 
Tennyson.  He  had  the  sense  to  take  the  advice  of  his 
critics,  to  rid  himself  of  puerilities,  to  be  patient,  to  dare 
to  investigate  and  grapple  with  his  own  faults,  to  enter 
upon  a  course  of  arduous  labor  and  invincible  watchful- 
ness, to  practice  not  merely  the  earnest  culture  of  art,  but 
also  to  seek  the  self-restraint  of  art;  and  he  has  fully  justi- 
fied their  presage  that  he  had  in  him  the  making  of  a  great 
poet.  Poetry  has  not  been  to  him  a  pastime,  but  the 
supreme  passion  and  toil  of  life.  Again  and  again  he  has 
polished  and  remolded  his  earlier  poems,  not  always,  per- 
haps, to  their  advantage,  but  always  with  the  intent  of 
making  them  more  perfect  in  metrical  harmony,  and  more 
complete  and  concise  in  poetic  workmanship.  The  melody 
has  grown  with  the  years;  it  has  become  more  subtle, 
more  penetrating,  more  magical.  He  has  carried  the  art 
of  metrical  construction  to  a  height  of  perfection  never 
before  attempted  in  English  poetry.  It  is  difficult  to  find 
a  false  rhyme,  a  slovenly  stanza,  or  a  halting  meter  in  all 
the  great  bulk  of  his  completed  works.  As  an  example 
of  the  infinite  laboriousness  of  true  poetic  art  there  can 
be  no  finer  example.  And  in  variety  of  subject  he  has 


68       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

but  one  rival.  He  has  treated  the  romantic,  the  antique, 
the  domestic  life  of  the  world  with  equal  skill.  History 
and  theology,  art  and  science,  legendary  lore,  and  modern 
social  problems  find  constant  reflection  and  presentment 
in  his  poetry.  Some  of  his  poems  are  so  clearly  hewn 
that  they  are  like  mighty  fragments  of  the  antique;  some 
treat  of  English  peasant  life;  some  of  fairy-lore;  some  of 
religious  fancy;  some  of  social  dreams  and  yearnings;  in 
some  the  theme  is  slight,  but  the  slightness  of  the  theme 
is  forgotten  in  the  excellence  of  the  workmanship;  in 
some  the  theme  is  as  solemn  as  life  and  death,  and  touches 
issues  which  are  as  old  as  human  thought.  "Rapt  nuns," 
it  has  been  said,  "English  ladies,  peasant  girls,  artists, 
lawyers,  farmers — in  short,  a  tolerably  complete  repre- 
sentation of  the  miscellaneous  public  of  the  present  day," 
jostle  one  another  in  his  picture  galleries.  True,  the 
cosmopolitan  note  of  Browning  is  wanting;  but  if  Tenny- 
son has  not  the  catholic  sympathies  of  Browning,  he  has 
succeeded  in  touching  with  the  utmost  felicity  many 
aspects  of  English  life  which  his  great  rival  has  ignored. 
And  his  mood  and  style  are  as  various  as  his  themes.  In 
such  poems  as  "Dora"  we  have  a  Wordsworthian  sim- 
plicity of  diction,  a  coolness  and  purity  of  coloring  almost 
cold  in  its  severity.  In  such  poems  as  "Maud"  and 
"Locksley  Hall"  we  have  the  utmost  elaboration  of  ornate 
imagery  and  effect.  He  can  be  severely  simple  and 
chastely  sensuous,  classic  and  grotesque,  subtle  and  pas- 
sionate, passing  with  the  ease  of  perfect  mastery  from 
love  to  dialectics,  from  the  wail  of  a  somber  pessimism  to 
the  exaltation  and  rapture  of  the  triumphant  lover.  He 
can  even  be  humorous,  and  excellently  humorous,  too,  as 
in  such  a  poem  as  the  "Northern  Farmer."  It  is  prob- 


Lord  Tennyson — General  Characteristics      69 

ably  in  this  diversity  of  gifts  that  the  great  secret  of 
Tennyson's  wide  popularity  is  to  be  found.  He  touches 
many  classes  of  readers,  many  varieties  of  mind.  Of  his 
limitations,  his  peculiarities  of  view  and  outlook,  his  atti- 
tude to  religion  and  politics,  his  pervading  melancholy  and 
the  causes  of  it,  we  shall  see  more  as  we  devote  more 
particular  attention  to  his  works;  but  enough  has  been 
said  to  explain  why  it  is  that  he  has  won  not  merely  wide 
but  sound  popularity;  and  not  merely  popularity,  but  fame 
and  success  such  as  no  other  English  poet  has  ever  enjoyed 
in  the  brief  period  during  which  his  work  was  actually 
being  done,  and  when  the  fruits  of  success  were  keenest 
to  the  taste  and  most  alluring  to  the  ambition. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  kind  of  criticism  and  from  what  sources  did  the 
writers  of  Tennyson's  time  have  to  meet? 

2.  How  is  the   influence    of  Keats   shown  in  Tennyson's 
earliest  work? 

3.  What  indications  of  Tennyson's  ability  are  shown  in  his 
early  poems? 

4.  Illustrate  this  by  the  "  Dying  Swan." 

5.  Why  was  Tennyson's  youth  "  an  unpropitious  hour  for 
poets"? 

6.  What  was  the  chief  error  of  his  earlier  poems? 

7.  How  did  these  poems  indicate  the  direction  in  which  lay 
his  real  power? 

8.  How  did  Tennyson  profit  by  the  advice  of  his  critics? 

9.  What    is    the    probable    reason    for    Tennyson's    wide 
popularity? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Alfred  Lord  Tennyson.     By  His  Son.    2  Volumes. 

The  Poetry  of  Tennyson.    Henry  Van  Dyke. 

Tennyson,  His  Art  and  Relation  to  Modern  Life.  Stopford 
A.  Brooke. 

Records  of  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  and  Browning.  Anne  Thack- 
eray Ritchie. 

The  Victorian  Poets.    Edmund  Clarence  Stedman. 


CHAPTER   VIII 
TENNYSON'S  TREATMENT  OF  NATURE 

The  variety  of  Tennyson's  work  makes  the  task  of 
arranging  it  more  than  usually  difficult.  Certain  portions 
of  his  work  are  directly  philosophical,  and  are  meant  to 
be  elucidations  or  solutions  of  some  of  the  deepest  prob- 
lems of  humanity.  Others  are  surcharged  with  mournful- 
ness,  and  might  be  called  lamentations;  dirges  over  dead 
hopes,  lost  glories  of  chivalry,  or  the  bitter  presage  of 
future  trouble  traveling  towards  us  in  the  development  of 
social  perils.  Others  are  purely  fanciful,  lyrics  finished 
with  airy  grace,  or  poems  breathing  the  enchantment  of 
fairy-lore.  But  such  a  classification  as  this  is  incomplete 
and  fails  to  yield  the  result  which  a  just  criticism  desires. 
Broadly  speaking,  there  are  certain  great  subjects  on 
which  all  true  poets  have  something  to  say.  These  sub- 
jects are  nature,  woman,  life,  politics,  and  religion. 
Nature  needs  no  definition;  under  the  head  of  woman  we 
must  include  all  that  pertains  to  love  and  chivalry;  under 
the  head  of  life,  the  general  view  of  human  action  and 
society  which  distinguishes  a  poet;  under  politics,  the 
poet's  view  of  progress  and  the  future  of  the  race;  under 
religion,  what  the  poet  has  to  say  about  the  devout  long- 
ings of  humanity,  its  sorrows  and  their  solution,  the  future 
and  its  promises.  It  will  be  found  that  under  this  classifi- 
cation the  works  of  all  great  poets  can  be  readily  placed. 
It  is  the  view  of  nature  which  is  the  distinguishing  feature 

70 


Tennyson's  Treatment  of  Nature          71 

in  Wordsworth;  it  is  the  view  of  woman — gross,  carnal, 
callous — which  is  the  damning  feature  in  Byron;  it  is  the 
view  of  religion  which  lends  such  paramount  interest  to 
the  poetry  of  Arnold  and  Browning.  Let  us  begin,  then, 
by  examining  what  Tennyson  has  to  say  about  Nature. 

We  have  already  seen  that  to  Shelley  Nature  was  some- 
thing more  than  an  abstract  phrase:  she  was  something 
alive,  a  radiant  and  potent  spirit,  a  glorious  power  filling 
the  mind  with  infinite  delight,  and  drawing  out  the  spirit 
of  man  in  ecstatic  communion.  The  first  thing  we  note 
about  Tennyson  is,  that  Nature  is  not  to  him  what  she  was 
to  either  Shelley  or  Wordsworth.  He  nowhere  regards 
Nature  as  a  living  presence.  He  at  no  time  listens  for  her 
voice  as  for  the  voice  of  God.  To  Shelley  Nature  was 
love;  to  Wordsworth  she  was  thought;  to  Tennyson  she 
is  neither.  He  does  not  habitually  regard  Nature  as 
the  vesture  of  the  Highest — the  outward  adumbration  of 
the  invisible  God.  He  does  not  even  regard  her  with  the 
purely  sensuous  delight  of  Keats.  And  the  reason  for 
this  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  sympathies  of  Tennyson  are 
so  various  that  there  is  no  excess  in  any;  it  is  the  full  play 
of  an  exquisitely  balanced  mind  that  we  see,  rather  than 
the  fine  ecstasy  of  an  enthusiastic  artist.  To  Wordsworth 
Nature  was  everything,  and  on  the  solitary  hills  he  wor- 
shiped before  her  altars,  and  in  the  voice  of  the  winds 
and  waters  he  heard  her  breathings  and  caught  the  mes- 
sage of  her  wisdom.  Apart  from  men,  in  solemn  loneli- 
ness, incurious  about  the  crowded  life  of  cities  or  the 
vast  movements  of  the  troubled  sea  of  human  thought,  he 
stood,  silent  and  entranced,  waiting  for  revelations  of  that 
Eternal  Power  whose  splendor  glowed  upon  the  hills  at 
dawn,  and  whose  mind  uttered  itself  out  of  the  starry 


72       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

spaces  of  the  wind-swept  heavens  at  night.  But  Tenny- 
son has  never  professed  himself  incurious  about  the 
progress  of  human  opinion  or  indifferent  to  the  life  of  cities. 
Wordsworth's  was  the  priestly  temperament,  Tennyson's 
is  the  artistic.  The  great  drama  of  human  life  has  not 
been  permitted  to  pass  him  unnoticed.  He  has  found  joy 
in  the  refinements  of  wealth,  interest  in  the  progress  of 
society,  passionate  absorption  in  the  theological  contro- 
versies of  his  time.  A  certain  dramatic  interest  has  always 
drawn  him  toward  the  tragic  realities  of  past  history  and 
of  present  life.  He  has  the  quick  eye  of  the  scientific 
observer  or  of  the  artistic  draughtsman,  but  little  of  the 
rapt  contemplation  of  the  seer.  Thus  it  follows  that, 
while  Nature  perpetually  colors  his  writings,  he  has  noth- 
ing new  to  say  about  her. 

There  is,  however,  one  quality  which  distinguishes  his 
view  of  nature  from  that  of  other  poets,  viz.,  the  scien- 
tific accuracy  of  his  observation.  Nature  to  him  is  neither 
love  nor  thought:  she  is  law.  He  is  full  of  the  modern 
scientific  spirit.  He  sees  everywhere  the  movement  of 
law  and  the  fulfillment  of  vast  purposes  which  are  part  of 
a  universal  order.  He  is  under  no  delusion  as  to  the 
meaning  of  Nature;  so  far  from  being  love,  she  is  "red  in 
tooth  and  claw  with  rapine."  The  conclusions  of  modern 
science  Tennyson  has  accepted  with  unquestioning  faith, 
and  the  only  factor  which  preserves  him  from  an  unpoeti- 
cal  view  of  nature  is  the  religious  faith  which  makes  him 
perceive  nature,  not  as  a  mechanical  engine  of  fate,  but  as 
a  process  of  law  leading  to  nobler  life  and  larger  being. 
That  is  the  mission  of  law:  not  to  slay,  but  to  make  alive; 
not  to  fulfill  a  blind  course,  but  to  work  out  a  divine  pur- 
pose and  a  diviner  life  for  man,  in  those  far-distant  cycles 


Tennyson's  Treatment  of  Nature          73 

which  eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  hath  it  entered  into  the  heart 
of  man  to  conceive. 

Then  comes  the  statelier  Eden  back  to  men; 

Then  reign  the  world's  great  bridals,  chaste  and  calm; 

Then  springs  the  crowning  race  of  human  kind. 

In  other  words,  Tennyson  sees  Nature  with  the  eye  of 
the  evolutionist,  and  traces  through  all  her  processes  the 
fulfillment  of  a  divine  wisdom  which  means  well  toward 
man  and  all  that  it  has  made — 

One  God,  one  law,  one  element, 

And  one  far-off  Divine  event 

To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 

On  the  other  hand,  because  Tennyson  says  little  that  is 
new  about  Nature,  it  must  not  be  assumed  that  he  does 
not  love  her.  On  the  contrary,  he  has  studied  her  with 
unwearied  fidelity,  for  which  his  knowledge  of  science  has 
probably  given  him  sharpened  instinct  and  patience.  It 
would  be  a  curiously  interesting  study  to  mark  the  wide 
difference  between  even  Shelley's  broad  generalizations  of 
nature,  accurate  as  they  are,  and  the  minute  patience 
which  Tennyson  has  devoted  to  every  little  touch  of  depic- 
tion in  which  clouds,  or  birds,  or  woods  are  represented 
to  us.  Tennyson's  mind  is  not  merely  exquisitely  sensi- 
tive to  natural  beauty,  but  it  is  deeply  tinged  with  the 
characteristics  of  that  scenery  in  which  his  early  manhood 
was  passed.  The  gray  hillside,  the  "ridged  wolds,"  the 
wattled  sheepfold,  the  long  plain,  the  misty  mornings  on 
the  fens,  the  russet  coloring  of  autumn — this  is  scenery 
such  as  England  abounds  in,  and  is  especially  characteris- 
tic of  Lincolnshire.  Even  more  distinctly  drawn  from  the 
fen  scenery  are  such  lines  as  these: 


74       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

And  the  creeping  mosses,  and  clambering  weeds, 
And  the  willow  branches,  hoar  and  dank, 
And  the  wavy  swell  of  the  soughing  reeds, 
And  the  silvery  marish-flowers  that  throng 
The  desolate  creeks  and  pools  among 
Were  flooded  over  with  eddying  song. 

In  this  single  poem  of  the  "Dying  Swan,"  as  we  have 
seen,  there  is  an  extraordinary  accumulation  of  effects, 
drawn  from  the  sadness  of  nature,  and  used  with  perfect 
skill  to  enhance  the  pathos  of  the  picture;  and  the  sough- 
ing of  the  wind  in  the  Lincolnshire  reeds  is  to  be  heard  in 
many  another  poem  with  equal  sadness  and  distinctness. 

It  is  not  without  interest  to  remark  that  so  great  a  poet 
as  Tennyson  is  educated,  not  amid  the  wonderful  dawns 
and  cloud  scenery  of  the  Lake  district,  but  under  the 
"doleful  under-roof  of  gray"  built  up  everywhere  above  a 
flat  country,  where  no  doubt  the  tourist — if  such,  indeed, 
ever  ventures  into  such  solemn  solitudes — would  aver  that 
there  is  nothing  picturesque  or  striking.  For  a  poet  who 
was  to  express  the  sadness  and  satiety  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  however,  it  may  be  doubted  if  a  more  appropriate 
cradle-land  could  be  discovered. 

No  doubt  it  is  in  part  to  these  natural  influences  which 
surrounded  his  boyhood  that  the  extraordinary  fidelity  of 
Tennyson's  descriptions  of  nature  is  to  be  attributed. 
Where  there  was  little  to  describe  it  was  natural  that  the 
power  of  observation  should  be  trained  to  minute  accuracy. 
Miss  Thackeray  tells  us  that  he  once  asked  her  to  notice 
whether  the  skylark  did  not  come  down  sideways  on  the 
wing.  This  is  extremely  characteristic  of  Tennyson's 
habit  in  the  observation  of  nature.  He  never  coins  a  false 
phrase  about  the  humblest  flower  that  blows,  for  the  sake 


Tennyson's  Treatment  of  Nature          75 

of  the  felicity  of  the  phrase  and  at  the  expense  of  the  tints 
of  the  flower.  He  tells  us  precisely  what  he  has  seen.  If 
he  tells  us  that  in  the  spring  "a  fuller  crimson  comes  upon 
the  robin's  breast,"  and  a  "livelier  iris  changes  on  the 
burnished  dove, "  we  may  be  quite  sure  that  he  has  watched 
the  robin  and  the  dove,  and  written  with  his  eyes  on  them 
rather  than  on  the  paper.  The  sidelong  descent  of  the 
lark  is  a  thing  to  be  noted,  that  when  he  comes  to  speak 
of  it  he  may  use  a  phrase  that  even  the  scientific  naturalist 
would  approve.  The  consequence  of  this  fidelity  to 
nature  is,  that  Tennyson  is  constantly  startling  us  with  the 
vivid  accuracy  of  his  descriptions.  We  say  again  and 
again,  "That  is  so;  I  have  seen  it,"  and  the  picture  is 
ineffaceably  stamped  upon  the  memory.  Sometimes  it  is 
done  with  a  single  phrase,  or  even  a  concentrated  word. 
The  writer  will  not  soon  forget  how  throughout  one  autumn 
he  was  haunted  by  the  phrase — 

All  in  a  death-dumb,  autumn-dripping  gloom. 

Again  and  again,  as  he  climbed  the  Dorsetshire  hills,  the 
line  met  him  at  the  summit:  for  there  lay  the  death-dumb 
land,  the  long  plain  with  its  dim  wisps  of  fog  already 
beginning  to  rise,  without  voice  or  sound;  the  stillness  of 
the  dying  season  like  the  silence  of  a  death-chamber;  and 
just  perceptible  in  the  near  hedgerow  the  constant  drip  of 
the  dew,  like  the  falling  of  unavailing  tears.  Let  any  one 
choose  a  very  quiet,  gray  day  in  late  autumn,  when  there 
has  been  a  previous  night  of  fog,  and  stand  in  a  solitary 
place  and  listen,  as  the  night  begins  to  fill  the  land,  and 
he  will  feel  how  exquisite  is  the  truth  of  the  description  of 
Arthur  coming  home  and  climbing  slowly  to  his  castle — 

All  in  a  death-dumb,  autumn-dripping  gloom. 


j6       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

The  same  vivid  pictorial  power  is  illustrated  in  many 
other  passages  which  will  readily  occur  to  the  Tennysonian 
student.  How  admirable  a  touch  of  depiction  is  this:  it 
is  the  hour  of  sunset  on  the  marshes,  when 

The  lone  hern  forgets  his  melancholy, 

Lets  down  his  other  leg,  and,  stretching,  dreams 

Of  goodly  supper  in  the  distant  pools. 

"A  full  sea,  glazed  with  muffled  moonlight,"  is  the  per- 
fect vignette  of  what  he  once  saw  at  Torquay ;  a  waterfall 
"slow-dropping  veils  of  thinnest  lawn,"  a  sketch  taken  on 
the  Pyrenees;  "a  great  black  cloud  draw  inward  from  the 
deep,"  an  etching  made  upon  the  top  of  Snowdon.  From 
boyhood  he  loved  the  sea  and  studied  it  in  all  its  moods, 
with  the  result  that  his  sea-pictures  are  always  exquisitely 
truthful.  In  those  hours  of  "wise  passiveness"  he 

marked 

The  curled  white  of  the  coming  wave 
Glass'd  in  the  slippery  sand  before  it  breaks, 

and  how 

The  wild  wave  in  the  wide  north-sea, 
Green-glimmering  toward  the  summit,  bears  with  all 
Its  stormy  crests  that  smoke  against  the  skies 
Down  on  a  bark,  and  overbears  the  bark 
And  him  that  helms  it. 

It  would  be  difficult  for  words  to  attain  to  higher  pictorial 
art  than  this:  these  two  verses  are  two  perfect  pictures  of 
the  summer  and  the  winter  sea. 

The  main  point  to  observe,  therefore,  about  Tennyson 
is,  that  in  him  we  have  the  scientific  observer  and  the 
artist  rather  than  the  interpreter  of  nature.  Wordsworth 
interprets;  Tennyson  describes.  He  is  vivid,  pictorial, 


Tennyson's  Treatment  of  Nature          77 

picturesque;  but  he  has  no  fresh  insight  into  the  soul  of 
things,  save  such  as  his  science  furnishes  him.  But  if  he 
has  no  new  gospel  to  preach  us  from  the  book  of  nature, 
we  may  at  least  rejoice  in  the  oerfect  finish  and  enchant- 
ment of  his  pictures. 

To  this  it  may  be  added  that  these  pictures  are  for  the 
most  part  essentially  English  in  tone,  atmosphere,*  and 
subject.  Now  and  again,  but  with  great  rareness,  he  has 
depicted  foreign  scenery,  as  in  the  "  Daisy "- 

How  faintly  flushed,  how  phantom-fair, 
Was  Monte  Rosa,  hanging  there, 
A  thousand  shadowy  penciled  valleys 
And  snowy  dells  in  a  golden  air. 

And  the  picture  is  perfect  both  in  glamour  and  fidelity. 
But  it  is  in  English  pictures  he  excels.  Who  that  has 
seen  the  land  of  Kent  does  not  recognize  this? — 

The  happy  valleys,  half  in  light,  and  half 
Far  shadowing  from  the  west,  a  land  of  peace; 
Gray  halls  alone  among  their  massive  groves; 
Trim  hamlets;  here  and  there  a  rustic  tower 
Half  lost  in  belts  of  hop  and  breadths  of  wheat; 
The  shimmering  glimpses  of  a  stream;  the  seas;" 
A  red  sail  or  a  white;  and  far  beyond, 
Imagined  more  than  seen,  the  skirts  of  France. 

Or  who  does  not  feel  the  truth  of  this  touch  of  rural  life 
in  England? — 

The  golden  autumn  woodland  reels 
Athwart  the  smoke  of  burning  weeds. 

Nor  is  it  only  such  peaceful  scenes  as  these  that  Tennyson 
can  invest  with  the  magic  of  his  art;  he  knows  how  to 
grasp  the  larger  effects  of  nature,  the  mountain  gloom,  the 


78       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

cloud  grandeur,  the  dawn  of  day  or  night  of  tempest,  and 
touch  them  off  with  an  imaginative  skill  and  power  of 
phrase  which  stamp  them  indelibly  on  the  memory.  For 
let  him  who  has  watched  the  pageant  of  the  dying  day  say 
if  any  human  art  could  more  grandly  fix  in  words  the 
western  cloud  effects  than  this — 

Yonder  cloud, 
That  rises  upward,  always  higher 

And  topples  round  the  dreary  west, 
A  looming  bastion  fringed  with  fire. 

Or  let  him  who  has  studied  the  warfare  of  wind  and  cloud 
and  the  wild  upheaval  and  terror  of  gathering  tempest  say 
if  this  is  not  a  picture  such  as  Turner  would  have  delighted 
to  paint,  and  only  he  could  have  painted  in  all  its  stern 
magnificence — 

The  forest  cracked,  the  waters  curl'd, 

The  cattle  huddled  on  the  lea  ; 

And  wildly  dashed  on  tower  and  tree 
The  sunbeam  strikes  along  the  world. 

Nor  could  any  angry  morning  after  tempest  be  better 
painted  than  in  this  one  pregnant  line — 

All  in  a  fiery  dawning,  wild  with  wind. 

Nor  could  the  savage  splendor  of  Alpine  fastnesses,  where 
precipice  and  glacier  rise  tier  above  tier,  in  shattered 
beauty  and  unvanquishable  strength,  be  better  brought 
home  to  the  imagination  than  in  this  touch  of  solemn 

imagery — 

The  monstrous  ledges  slope,  and  spill 
Their  thousand  wreaths  of  dangling  water-smoke 
That  like  a  ruined  purpose  waste  in  air. 

Nor  has  the  breaking  up  of  a  stormy  sky,  when  the  clouds 
suddenly  lift  as  though  withdrawn  upon  invisible  pulleys, 


Tennyson's  Treatment  of  Nature          79 

and  there  is  light  at  eventide,  ever  been  represented  better 
than  in  one  of  the  earliest  of  all  these  poems,  the  immature 
and  unequal  "Eleanore"- 

As  thunder-clouds,  that  hung  on  high, 
Roof'd  the  world  with  doubt  and  fear, 
Floating  thro'  an  evening  atmosphere, 

Grow  golden  all  about  the  sky. 

And  for  imaginative  intensity,  such  as  the  great  Greek 
poets  would  have  delighted  in,  and  indeed  wholly  in  their 
manner,  it  is  hard  to  excel  the  phrase  in  which  Tithonus 
describes  the  glory  of  the  dawn — 

And  the  wild  team 

Which  love  thee,  yearning  for  thy  yoke,  arise 
And  shake  the  darkness  from  their  loosened  manes, 
And  beat  the  twilight  into  flakes  of  fire. 

Or  the  farewell  of  Ulysses,  when  he  cries: 

Come,  my  friends, 

'-Tis  not  too  late  to  seek  a  newer  world, 
Push  off,  and,  sitting  well  in  order,  smite 
The  sounding  furrows  ;  for  my  purpose  holds 
To  sail  beyond  the  sunset,  and  the  baths 
Of  all  the  western  stars  until  I  die. 

These  are  but  random  samples  of  the  perfection  to 
which  Tennyson  has  wrought  his  art  in  the  faithful  and 
accurate  depiction  of  nature.  Every  word  tells:  it  tells 
because  it  is  true,  because  it  expresses  the  very  spirit  of 
the  scene  that  he  would  paint,  not  less  than  its  external 
show.  The  labor  and  culture  which  lie  behind  such  per- 
fect phrases  as  these  are  immense.  Not  infrequently  the 
source  of  some  fine  image  is  to  be  found  in  some  remote 
page  of  the  older  poets;  and  part  of  the  charm  of  the 
Tennysonian  phrase  is,  that  it  is  often  reminiscent — a  sub- 


8o       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

tie  echo,  as  it  were,  of  a  more  ancient  music,  which  does  not 
offend,  but  fascinates.  Thus  the  image  of  the  "ploughed 
sea"  is  one  of  the  very  oldest  since  the  dawn  of  language, 
and  the  picture  of  the  dawn  in  "Tithonus"  has  its  counter- 
part in  Marston's  noble  lines — 

But  see,  the  dapple-gray  coursers  of  the  morn 
Beat  up  the  light  with  their  bright  silver  hoofs, 
And  chase  it  through  the  sky.* 

But  the  more  enduring  element  of  beauty  in  such  lines  is 
their  delightful  truthfulness.  "The  sounding  furrows"  is 
an  exact  representation  to  ear  and  eye  of  what  happens 
when  the  heaving  waters  are  suddenly  smitten  with  the 
level  sweep  of  oars.  The  darkness  trampled  into  flakes  of 
fire  is  the  precise  effect  of  the  instantaneous  irruption  of 
the  splendor  of  the  dawn,  when  the  thin  clouds  that  lie 
across  the  east  are  broken  up  into  floating  fragments,  and 
hang  quivering,  like  golden  flames,  in  the  lucid  air,  when 
the  world  lies  still  and  windless,  waiting  for  the  day. 
"The  fiery  dawn,"  the  great  burst  of  streaming  yellow, 
not  graduated  into  crimson  or  purple,  but  all  vast  and 
lurid,  like  an  angry  conflagration  in  the  east,  is  a  spectacle 
which  the  seaman  knows  too  well,  when  the  night  has  been 
"wild  with  wind,"  and  the  storm  pauses  at  the  dawn,  only 
to  gather  strength  for  the  riotous  havoc  of  the  day.  It  is 
the  exact  truth  of  nature  which  is  fixed  in  phrases  like 
these.  It  is  the  truth  Turner  painted,  the  vision  of  the 
miracle  of  nature  which  he  strove  with  infinite  toil  and  true 
inspiration  to  retain  in  his  immortal  canvases.  And 
because  it  is  true  art,  therefore  it  is  fine  art.  Much  that 
might  be  said  of  nature,  Tennyson  has  not  said;  to  much 

*  Vide  Lamb's  "  Specimens  of  Elizabethan  Poetry." 


Tennyson's  Treatment  of  Nature  8 1 

that  others  have  said  he  is  indifferent.  But  this  at  least 
he  has  done:  he  has  approached  nature,  not  with  the  hot 
and  hasty  zeal  of  the  impressionist,  but  with  the  cool  eye 
of  the  consummate  artist;  and  every  sketch  of  nature 
which  he  has  given  us,  whether  of  the  commonplace  or 
the  extraordinary,  is  finished  with  admirable  skill,  and  has 
the  crowning  merit  of  absolute  fidelity,  accuracy,  and 
truth. 


QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  great  subjects  are  discussed  by  all  the  eminent 
poets  ? 

2.  Illustrate  this  in  the  case  of  several  English  poets. 

3.  How  is  the  view  of  nature  as  held  by  Shelley  and  Words- 
worth different  from  that  of  Tennyson  ? 

4.  How  did  Tennyson's  life  in  the  fen  country  influence  his 
study  of  nature  ? 

5.  Show  how   exquisitely  truthful  are  his  descriptions  of 
the  sea. 

6.  What  is  true  of  his  descriptions  of  English  scenery  ? 

7.  Give  other  examples  of  his  skill  in  portraying  nature. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Alfred  Tennyson:  His  Life  and  Works.    W.  E.  Wace, 
Alfred  Tennyson.    Andrew  Lang. 

Tennyson :  His  A  rt  and  Relation  to  Modern  Life.    Stopf  ord 
A.  Brooke. 

The  Poetry  of  Tennyson.    Henry  Van  Dyke. 


CHAPTER   IX 
TENNYSON— LOVE  AND  WOMAN 

Just  as  one  of  the  most  crucial  points  about  a  poet  is 
his  treatment  of  nature,  so  again  his  view  of  womanhood 
affords  a  key  to  the  character  of  his  mind  arid  the  quality 
of  his  genius.  The  love  poetry  of  the  world  is  one  of  its 
most  fascinating  inheritances  and  ranges  through  many 
keys.  Love  has  always  furnished  the  impulse  to  poetry 
and  has  often  been  its  staple.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find 
any  poet  who  has  nothing  to  say  of  love;  it  would  be  easy 
to  find  many  poets  who  have  never  written  exquisitely  till 
they  became  lovers.  The  new  divine  warmth  of  the  heart 
has  liberated  the  faculties  of  the  intellect  and  has  given 
inspiration  and  insight  to  the  soul.  Even  when  the  warmth 
has  been  sensuous  rather  than  divine,  it  has  not  the  less 
had  some  effect  in  the  liberation  of  the  mind.  Burns  dis- 
plays his  highest  genius  in  his  love  lyrics.  Some  of  the 
Elizabethan  poets  are  famous  only  by  a  single  stanza,  or 
a  single  poem,  which  expresses  the  passion  of  the  human 
heart  with  such  felicity,  such  delicate  skill,  such  fire  and 
tenderness,  that  the  world  cannot  forget  their  phrases. 
Rossetti  lives  in  the  vision  of  womanhood,  with  every 
sense  perpetually  tingling  to  the  keen  delight  of  passion. 
Even  Wordsworth  kindles  at  the  vision  of  love:  he  sees 
the  ideal  woman  glowing  before  him,  not  with  any  heat  of 
passion  indeed,  but  with  a  calm  and  spiritual  radiance, 
which  is  to  him  as  a  sacred  flame,  searching  the  spirit  and 

82 


Tennyson — Love  and  Woman  83 

purifying  the  heart.  Perhaps  the  poet  of  our  day  least 
affected  by  the  enchantment  of  love  is  Matthew  Arnold. 
He  is  too  reticent  for  passion,  is  too  sadly  philosophical  to 
sing  the  rapture  of  the  lover.  But  even  Arnold  has  writ- 
ten love  verses — not  inspired  lyrics  like  Burns 's,  but  never- 
theless, verses  which  have  sprung  from  a  lover's  yearning. 
Tennyson  is  so  far  from  an  exception,  that  love  forms  the 
great  motive  in  all  his  larger  poems.  Everywhere  he 
testifies  to  the  pre-eminence  and  influence  of  woman.  He 
has  been  an  ardent  student  of  womanhood,  and  has  struck 
out  with  admirable  skill  and  genuine  artistic  feeling  many 
typical  portraits  of  womanhood.  He  has  mastered  the 
difficult  secret  of  how  to  write  voluptuously  and  yet  retain 
the  bloom  of  a  delicate  and  almost  virginal  purity.  He 
knows  how  to  be  passionate,  but  his  passion  never  passes 
into  that  sensuous  extravagance  which  is  the  sign  of  weak- 
ness. There  is  always  a  gravity  and  earnestness  about  it 
which  preserves  him  from  an  excess  which  becomes  ridicu- 
lous. In  this  he  stands  nearer  to  Wordsworth  than  to 
either  Keats  or  Burns.  But  whereas  in  Wordsworth 
woman  has  no  commanding  position,  and  is  almost  for- 
gotten and  obliterated  in  the  presence  of  nature,  in 
Tennyson  woman  is  always  pre-eminent,  and  the  fas- 
cination of  woman  is  at  least  as  strong  as  the  charm  of 
nature. 

And  here  again  we  cannot  help  tracing  the  treatment 
of  woman  in  Tennyson's  poetry  to  the  early  influences 
which  surrounded  his  boyhood.  He  was  never  cast  upon 
the  world,  to  sink  or  swim  as  he  could,  in  the  great  seeth- 
ing whirlpools  of  sensual  temptation.  He  carried  with 
him  no  evil  heritage  of  passionate  blood,  as  did  Byron;  he 
was  not  brought  face  to  face  with  any  daring  theories  of 


84       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

free  love,  as  was  Shelley;  he  was  not  dependent  on  the 
coarse  orgies  of  village  society  for  recreation,  as  was 
Burns.  He  breathed  an  atmosphere  of  refinement  from 
the  very  first.  He  was  trained  by  every  sight  and  influ- 
ence of  early  life  into  that  fastidious  purity  which  charac- 
terizes him.  He  grew  into  vigor  in  what  might  be  called 
the  cloistral  calm  of  clerical  life  in  a  remote  English  vil- 
lage. The  baser  side  of  human  life  was  not  seen;  the 
carnal  meanings  of  love  never  so  much  as  named;  the 
coarser  aspects  of  passion  were  smothered  in  flowers  and 
fragrances.  Behind  all  the  love  lyrics  of  Tennyson  one 
sees  the  picture  of  a  calmly  ordered  home,  where  domestic 
love  moves  like  a  shining  presence,  with  hands  busy  in 
silent  ministrations  and  heart  full  of  the  tenderness  of  a 
pure  devotion.  The  portrait  of  Tennyson's  mother  is  the 
key  to  his  reverence  for  womanhood.  It  is  a  beautiful 
and  tender  face,  delicately  molded,  lighted  with  a  spiritual 
radiance  of  sympathy  and  hope,  and  yet,  too,  bearing 
pathetic  traces  of  resigned  sadness  and  sorrowful  experi- 
ence. We  can  understand  how  Tennyson  was  preserved 
from  the  fatality  of  recklessness,  how  it  is  he  has  worn 
the  white  flower  of  a  blameless  life,  and  has  ruled  himself 
with  chivalrous  regard  for  womanhood,  when  we  study 'his 
mother's  face.  What  such  a  woman  must  have  been  in 
the  home,  and  what  sort  of  home  it  must  have  been 
where  she  moved  like  a  ministering  spirit,  we  can  readily 
imagine.  And  how  divinely  pure  and  penetrating  may 
be  the  influence  of  such  a  woman  Tennyson  has  told 
us  in  a  passage  of  the  "Princess,"  which  might  without 
much  risk  of  misinterpretation  be  taken  as  a  personal 
reminiscence — 


Tennyson — Love  and  Woman  85 

I  loved  her:  one 

Not  learned,  save  in  gracious  household  ways, 
Not  perfect,  nay,  but  full  of  tender  wants, 
No  angel,  but  a  dearer  being,  all  dipt 
In  angel  instincts,  breathing  Paradise, 
Who  looked  all  native  to  her  place,  and  yet 
On  tiptoe  seemed  to  touch  upon  a  sphere 
Too  gross  to  tread,  and  all  male  minds  perforce 
Swayed  to  her  from  their  orbits  as  they  moved, 
And  girdled  her  with  music.     Happy  he 
With  such  a  mother!  faith  in  womankind 
Beats  in  his  blood,  and  trust  in  all  things  high 
Comes  easy  to  him,  and  tho'  he  trip  and  fall 
He  shall  not  blind  his  soul  with  clay. 

The  first  point  to  be  noted,  therefore,  in  Tennyson's  treat- 
ment of  love  is  its  conspicuous  purity.  It  is  the  love  of 
the  chivalrous  knight,  not  of  the  Bohemian  profligate, 
which  he  paints.  His  whole  conception  of  love  is  rever- 
ential. It  is  a  spiritual  passion,  not  an  earthly.  He  per- 
ceives it  in  its  spiritual  working,  and  not  in  its  fleshly. 
With  rare  exceptions  he  shuns  altogether  the  fleshly 
aspects  of  love.  One  exception  is  found  among  the  early 
poems  in  the  striking  ballad  called  "The  Sisters,"  but  this 
is  an  obvious  imitation  of  the  ancient  ballad  poetry,  in 
which  passion  is  indeed  a  prime  motive,  but  is  always 
treated  with  a  healthy  frankness.  But  the  poem  partially 
fails  as  a  perfect  imitation  of  the  ancient  ballad,  simply 
because  Tennyson  cannot  allude  to  unchaste  passion  with- 
out a  burst  of  terrible  denunciation — 

She  died:  she  went  to  burning  flame, 
She  mixed  her  ancient  blood  with  shame, 
The  wind  is  howling  in  turret  and  tree. 

He  leaps  upon  the  desecrator  of  human  love  with  a  bitter 
wrath,  and  with  words  like  the  sword-flash  of  an  avenging 


86       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

angel.  The  other  great  example  of  Tennyson's  treatment 
of  the  baser  side  of  love  is  the  unlawful  love  of  Guinevere. 
But  even  here  again  he  manifests  the  same  sternness  of 
avenging  purity.  Not  by  one  touch,  one  veiled  hint  or 
half  a  word,  does  he  seek  to  move  the  springs  of  evil  con- 
cupiscence in  his  reader.  What  he  sees  again  is  not  the 
fleshly  side  of  unlawful  passion,  but  the  spiritual.  From 
the  sin  of  Guinevere  springs  the  ruin  of  an  empire.  Her 
outrage  upon  purity  is  avenged  in  the  downfall  of  that 
great  kingdom  of  chivalry  which  Arthur  had  built  up  with 
infinite  toil.  The  great  purpose  of  that  kingdom  was  that 
it  should  be  God's  kingdom  on  earth.  The  work  of  its 
great  knights  was 

To  ride  abroad  redressing  human  wrongs. 
Their  rule  of  conduct  was 

To  speak  no  slander,  no,  nor  listen  to  it, 
To  lead  sweet  lives  in  purest  chastity, 
To  love  one  maiden  only,  cleave  to  her, 
And  worship  her  by-years  of  noble  deeds 
Until  they  won  her. 

And  now  what  happened?  Arthur  tells  her  she  has  spoilt 
the  purpose  of  his  life — 

Well  is  it  that  no  child  is  born  of  thee. 

The  children  born  of  thee  are  sword  and  fire, 

Red  ruin,  and  the  breaking  up  of  laws. 

The  carnal  sin  of  one  guilty  woman  has  shattered  into 
utter  ruin  the  noblest  kingdom  ever  built  upon  the  earth. 
That  is  the  one  awful  fact  which  Tennyson  sees,  and  that 
is  the  keynote  to  the  whole  poem.  Where  other  poets 
might  have  seen  a  subject  on  which  they  could  lavish  all 
the  wealth  of  sensuous  imagery,  he  sees  not  the  manner 


Tennyson — Love  and  Woman  87 

of  the  sinning,  and  is  not  careful  to  paint  it,  but  the  infi- 
nite consequences  of  the  sin  streaming  on,  like  a  loosened 
flood  of  flame,  working  havoc  and  infinite  wreck  upon 
every  side.  Just  as  it  is  the  spiritual  cleansing  of  love 
which  he  paints  when  he  tells  us — 

Love  took  up  the  harp  of  Life,  and  struck  on  all  the  chords 

with  might, 
Smote  the  chord  of  self,  that,  trembling,  passed  in  music  out 

of  sight — 

so  it  is  the  spiritual  and  moral  effect  of  the  base  selfish- 
ness of  unchaste  passion  which  he  describes,  when  he 
paints  the  breaking  up  of  the  Round  Table,  and  Arthur 
turning  sadly  away  to  lead  his  disheartened  hosts 

Far  down  to  that  great  battle  in  the  west. 

It  is  this  perfect  and  pellucid  purity  of  Tennyson's 
mind  which  has  enabled  him  to  do  many  things  impossible 
to  others.  Take,  for  instance,  such  a  poem  as  "Godiva." 
A  subject  more  difficult  of  handling  it  would  be  hard  to 
find.  The  slightest  prurience  of  thought  would  have  been 
ruinous.  So  difficult  and  delicate  is  the  theme  that  the 
merest  feather-weight  of  over-description,  a  word  too 
much,  a  shade  of  color  too  warm,  a  hint  only  of  human  heat, 
would  upset  the  balance  and  turn  a  poem  which  sparkles 
with  a  crystal  purity  into  a  poem  brilliant  only  with  the 
iridescence  of  corrupt  conception.  Such  a  theme  could 
not  have  been  intrusted  to  Rossetti;  scarcely,  indeed,  to 
Keats;  absolutely  not  to  Swinburne.  To  make  it  accept- 
able, not  merely  the  most  delicate  lightness  of  touch  was 
needed,  but  the  most  pellucid  freshness  of  thought. 
Both  Keats  and  Rossetti  would  have  over-colored  the 
picture,  and  left  upon  the  taste  the  taint  of  an  unwhole- 


88       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

some  voluptuousness.  What  Swinburne  would  have  made 
of  it  needs  no  sort  of  explanation.  But  Tennyson  is  able 
to  treat  it  nobly,  with  simplicity  and  severity  of  touch,  and 
he  does  so  in  sheer  virtue  of  his  own  purity  of  heart. 
There  is  about  him  something  of  that  divine  quality  which 
Guinevere  discovers  in  King  Arthur — 

The  pure  severity  of  perfect  light. 

He  has  no  cunning  eye  to  discern  anything  in  the  sub- 
ject which  can  minister  to  the  baser  man.     What  he  sees 
is  a  noble  woman  performing  an  heroic  deed.     He  de- 
scribes her  in  imagery  which  clothes  her  as  with  a  garment 
of  light- 
She  lingered,  looking  like  a  summer  moon 
Half-dipt  in  cloud  :  anon  she  shook  her  head, 
And  showered  the  rippled  ringlets  to  her  knee  ; 
Unclad  herself  in  haste  ;  adown  the  stair 
Stole  on  ;  and,  like  a  creeping  sunbeam  slid 
From  pillar  unto  pillar. 
Then  she  rode  forth  clothed  only  with  chastity. 

It  is  the  moral  significance  of  the  scene  which  fasci- 
nates Tennyson — the  spectacle  of  a  woman  sacrificing  her- 
self for  the  people's  good,  and  so  building  for  herself  an 
everlasting  name.  "Godiva"  is  a  short  poem,  but  it  is 
invaluable  as  an  index  to  the  purity  of  Tennyson's  genius, 
for  no  poet  who  was  not  penetrated  by  the  utmost  rever- 
ence for  womanhood  could  have  treated  such  a  subject 
with  such  daring  or  such  conspicuous  success. 

This  reverence  of  Tennyson  for  womanhood  is  marked 
in  all  his  poems,  and  is  an  influence  more  or  less  apparent 
throughout  his  work.  The  early  poems  no  less  than  the 
later  abound  in  evidence  of  its  sincerity.  The  very  fact 
that  so  many  of  his  poems  describe  women,  and  bear  the 


Tennyson — Love  and  Woman  89 

names  of  women,  is  in  itself  significant.  He  bears  con- 
stant testimony  to  the  "finer  female  sense,"  and  is  careful 
that  he  shall  not  offend  it  by  his  "random  string." 
Woman,  as  he  conceives  her,  is  the  divinely  purifying 
element  in  human  life.  Chivalry  to  woman  is  no  mere 
romantic  echo  of  the  past:  it  is  the  sign  manual  of  every 
noble  soul.  The  apprehensions  of  woman  are  more  deli- 
cate than  man's;  her  instincts  are  surer,  her  intuition 
more  certain,  her  spirit  more  gracious,  more  tender,  and 
more  divine.  He  who  despises  the  intuitions  of  pure 
womanhood  quenches  a  light  which  God  has  set  in  the 
world  for  his  guidance  and  illumination.  Of  course  this 
is  no  new  doctrine,  either  in  poetry  or  morals.  But  it 
came  upon  the  world  almost  as  a  new  doctrine  in  1830. 
The  women  of  poetry  fifty  years  ago — the  women  of 
Byron,  to  wit — had  no  sign  of  any  divine  intuition  about 
them.  They  were  warm,  weak,  and  foolish.  They  never 
exercised  the  slightest  control  over  men,  except  the  sensu- 
ous control  of  passion.  They  were  neither  reverenced  nor 
obeyed.  They  were  the  toys  of  desire,  the  beautiful  and 
fragile  playthings  of  an  hour.  Neither  in  poetry  nor  in 
real  life  was  woman  treated  with  reverential  chastity  of 
thought  sixty  years  ago.  The  revolution  and  emancipa- 
tion of  woman  had  not  yet  come.  It  was  easy,  therefore, 
for  writers  like  Bulwer  Lytton,  throughout  whose  works 
there  is  scarcely  one  example  of  reverence  for  woman,  and 
in  which  the  prevalent  conception  of  woman  is  debasingly 
gross  and  offensive,  to  mock  Tennyson  as  "school-miss 
Arthur."  It  was  easy  to  use  the  femininity  of  tone  in 
the  earlier  poems  as  a  weapon  of  insult  against  him. 
Bulwer  Lytton  had  yet  to  discover  that  reverence  for 
woman  did  not  imply  any  lack  of  virility  in  manhood.  No 


90       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

more  stinging  retort  was  ever  made  than  the  verse  which 
"Miss  Arthur"  fixed  upon  the  dandy  author  of  "Pel- 
ham"— 

What  profits  it  to  understand 

The  merits  of  a  spotless  shirt, 
A  dapper  foot,  a  little  hand, 
If  half  the  little  soul  be  dirt ! 

For  it  was  not  weakness  of  fiber  which  bred  in  Tenny- 
son a  reverence  for  woman,  but  nobility  of  spirit.  And  it 
was  something  more  than  this.  It  was  the  outcome  of 
pure  training  under  the  gracious  eyes  of  good  women. 
The  home  was  to  Tennyson  the  highest  and  noblest 
expression  of  human  life.  His  sympathy  with  romance 
and  chivalry  gave  us  exquisite  sketches  of  mediaeval 
thought,  like  the  "Lady  of  Shalott,"  and  finally  worked 
out  the  noblest  series  of  poems  in  modern  literature,  "The 
Idylls  of  the  King."  The  same  romantic  sympathy  is 
apparent  in  such  a  poem  of  fairy  fancy  as  the  "Day- 
Dream."  But  the  strongest  movement  of  Tennyson's 
mind  in  the  direction  of  woman-worship  is  toward 
domestic  life.  It  is  in  married  love  the  noblest  blooming 
of  love  is  found.  It  is  there  the  divinest  dreams  of  love 
are  realized.  Happy  he  to  whom  such  joy  is  given,  but 
the  joy  is  not  for  all. 

Of  love  that  never  found  his  earthly  close 

What  sequel  ?     Streaming  eyes,  and  breaking  hearts  ? 

Or  all  the  same  as  if  he  had  not  been  ? 

Not  so.  When  love  and  duty  strive  together,  the  victory 
is  with  duty.  Any  love  snatched  in  defiance  of  duty  is 
not  true  love:  because  it  forgets  reverence  to  womanhood, 
therefore  it  is  base,  and  can  only  lead  to  moral  disintegra- 
tion and  corruption.  Better  far 


Tennyson — Love  and  Woman  91 

Such  tears  as  flow  but  once  a  life, 

In  that  last  kiss,  which  never  was  the  last ! 

For  to  Tennyson  so  supreme  is  the  passion  of  reverence 
for  womanhood,  so  infinitely  high  and  dear  is  womanly 
purity,  that  it  becomes  the  key  to  everything  really  noble 
in  human  life,  and  any  outrage  upon  that  is  the  vilest  of 
all  sin — such  sin  as  shakes  the  pillars  of  society  and  over- 
throws the  majesty  and  might  of  empire.  Reverence  for 
woman  and  reverence  for  self  go  hand  in  hand. 

Self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control, 
These  three  alone  lead  life  to  sov  reign  power, 
Yet  not  for  power  (power  of  herself 
Would  come  uncalled  for),  but  to  live  by  law, 
Acting  the  law  we  live  by  without  fear  : 
And,  because  right  is  right,  to  follow  right 
Were  wisdom  in  the  scorn  of  consequence. 

But  high  as  Tennyson  sets  woman,  yet  he  retains  a 
clear  conception  of  the  just  and  proper  place  of  woman  in 
society.  She  may  inspire  and  lead  man,  but  she  is  not 
equal  with  man.  She  may,  indeed,  govern  men,  but  it  is 
not  by  the  right  of  superior  intellectual  endowment,  but 
by  the  force  of  her  nobility  of  soul.  Her  passions  matched 
with  man's 

Are  as  moonlight  unto  sunlight,  and  water  unto  wine. 

That  is  a  rough  and  dramatic  way  of  expressing  the  truth, 
which  Tennyson  has  worked  out  at  large,  with  great 
subtlety  and  skill,  in  the  remarkable  poem  of  the  "Prin- 
cess." 

The  central  point  of  the  whole  argument  in  the  "Prin- 
cess" is,  that  woman  was  never  meant  to  wrestle  with  man 
in  the  arena  of  intellectual  pre-eminence  or  the  active  busi- 
ness of  the  world.  He  will  reverence  her  to  the  utmost, 


92       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

but  he  will  not  abdicate  in  her  favor.  In  fact,  his  very 
reverence  is  founded  on  her  possession  of  certain  qualities 
which  man  has  in  only  a  less  degree,  and  those  qualities 
are  the  highest,  because  they  lead  to  the  noblest  results 
in  the  actual  administration  of  human  life.  Man  rules 
through  the  brain,  woman  through  the  heart.  If  man  is 
to  be  ruled  by  woman  it  can  only  be  a  spiritual  rule,  not 
an  intellectual.  In  nothing  is  the  reasonableness  of  Tenny- 
son's mind  better  seen  than  in  this  poem.  It  would  have 
been  easy  for  him  to  become  an  impassioned  advocate  of 
women's  rights.  On  the  contrary,  his  very  reverence  for 
womanhood  leads  him  to  put  certain  limitations  upon 
woman's  empire,  which  do  not  hinder  its  influence,  but 
rather  intensify  it.  The  power  of  woman  is  not  to  be 
wasted  in  vulgar  strife  with  men  for  social  pre-eminence: 
it  is  too  rare,  too  subtle,  too  ethereal.  That  power  finds 
its  highest  exercise  in  molding  men  to  morality  and  pene- 
trating nations  with  the  spirit  of  purity.  The  woman  who 
is  "slight-natured,  miserable,"  prevents  by  her  peevish- 
ness the  growth  of  man.  There  is  no  strife  between  man 
and  woman — 

The  woman's  cause  is  man's:  they  rise  or  sink 
Together,  dwarfed  or  god-like,  bond  or  free. 

They  are  "distinct  in  individualities,"  and  the  only  bond 
of  common  life  and  toil  is — 

Self-reverent  each,  and  reverencing  each. 

And  the  noble  conclusion  of  the  whole  argument  once 
more  leads  to  that  vision  of  the  perfect  home  which  never 
fades  from  the  poet's  heart — 

For  woman  is  not  undevelopt  man, 

But  diverse  :  could  we  make  her  as  the  man 


Tennyson — Love  and  Woman  93 

Sweet  Love  were  slain:  his  dearest  bond  is  this, 

Not  like  to  like,  but  like  in  difference. 

Yet  in  the  long  years  liker  must  they  grow; 

The  man  be  more  of  woman,  she  of  man; 

He  gain  in  sweetness  and  in  moral  height, 

Nor  lose  the  wrestling  thews  that  throw  the  world; 

She  mental  breadth,  nor  fail  in  childward  care, 

Nor  lose  the  child-like  in  the  larger  mind: 

Till  at  the  last  she  set  herself  to  man 

Like  perfect  music  unto  noble  words; 

And  so  these  twain,  upon  the  skirts  of  Time, 

Sit  side  by  side,  full-summed  in  all  their  powers, 

Dispensing  harvest,  sowing  the  To-be. 

Finally,  we  may  say  of  Tennyson's  view  of  woman- 
hood that  it  is  not  easy  to  exaggerate  the  immense  service 
he  has  rendered  to  society  by  his  constant  insistence  on 
the  nobility  of  purity,  the  divine  grace  of  chastity.  He 
has  never  glorified  the  wanton  or  clothed  evil  with  a 
golden  mist  of  glowing  words.  He  has'  kept  his  moral 
sense  acute  and  sensitive,  and  has  never  confused  the 
limits  of  right  and  wrong.  With  a  clear  and  steady  eye 
he  has  gazed  upon  the  acts  of  unchaste  passion,  but  not 
with  sympathy,  not  with  delirious  yearning,  not  with  any 
voluptuous  quickening  of  the  pulse;  but  always  with  loath- 
ing, with  hatred,  with  the  strenuous  abhorrence  of  a  noble 
heart,  strong  in  its  virgin  purity.  He  has  known  where 
the  secret  of  strength  lay — 

His  strength  was  as  the  strength  of  ten, 
Because  his  heart  was  pure. 

There  is  no  taint  upon  his  page.  He  has  followed  a  high 
ideal,  and  has  been  consistent  to  it  through  a  long  life. 
For  him  vice  has  had  no  seduction;  a  jealous  virtue  has 
sat  enthroned  in  the  heart  of  his  genius  and  preserved 


94       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

his  mind  unsullied.  When  we  consider  the  bulk  of  his 
work,  the  multitude  of  his  readers,  the  greatness  of  his 
influence,  and  when  we  contrast  with  him  the  influence 
and  work  of  such  a  poet  as  Byron,  we  begin  to  under- 
stand how  vast  a  service  Tennyson  has  rendered  to  the 
cause  of  righteousness  by  the  reverent  ideal  of  womanhood 
he  has  maintained  and  the  great  example  of  purity  which 
he  has  set. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  Compare  Tennyson's   general   attitude   toward   women 
with  that  of  some  of  the  greater  English  poets. 

2.  How  is  Tennyson's  purity  of  mind  illustrated  in  his  treat- 
ment of  Guinevere  and  of  Godiva? 

3.  Why  did  Tennyson's  view  of  woman  come  to  the  world 
as  a  new  doctrine? 

4.  What  was  his  idea  of  woman's  sphere? 

5.  Why  is  it  not  easy  to  exaggerate  Tennyson's  influence 
upon  the  social  life  of  his  time? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Tennyson :  His  Art  and  Relation  to  Modern  Life.  Stopford 
A.  Brooke. 

The  Poetry  of  Tennyson.     Henry  Van  Dyke. 

Three  Great  Teachers  of  Our  Time — Carlyle,  Tennyson, 
Ruskin.  A.  H.  Japp. 

Lessons  from  My  Masters  (Cartyle,  Tennyson,  Ruskin}. 
Peter  Bayne. 


CHAPTER    X 
TENNYSON'S  VIEW  OF  LIFE  AND  SOCIETY 

It  is  hardly  to  be  expected  of  a  poet  that  he  should  be 
required  to  define  his  views  on  sociology,  or  that  he  should 
begin  his  work  in  imaginative  literature  with  any  cut-and- 
dried  social  creed,  which  it  is  his  mission  to  propagate. 
No  great  poet  has  ever  set  out  with  any  such  propaganda. 
Wordsworth  and  the  Lake  poets  did  profess  a  definite 
creed,  and  drew  up  a  statement  of  their  principles,  but 
they  were  purely  literary  principles.  There  was  nothing 
in  these  principles  to  lead  the  Lake  poets  toward  any 
common  view  of  human  life  or  human  society.  Each 
took  his  own  course  apart  from  the  literary  principles  they 
professed  in  common,  and  it  was  inevitable  that  he  should. 
Training,  idiosyncrasy,  environment,  the  social  status  of 
the  poet,  the  methods  of  his  education,  the  opportunities 
he  may  have  of  knowing  the  world,  or  the  reverse — all 
these,  and  a  thousand  other  causes,  contribute  to  the 
shaping  of  his  thought  and  the  consequent  attitude  of  his 
mind  toward  human  life.  But  though  a  poet  may  have 
no  definite  intention  of  drawing  up  any  philosophic  inter- 
pretation of  life,  he  usually  succeeds  in  doing  so.  He 
cannot  help  himself.  He  is  bound  to  furnish  himself  with 
some  answer  to  the  great  problems  that  press  upon  him 
hungrily,  with  a  dreadful  insistence,  a  voice  that  cannot  be 
silenced.  Some  ideal  of  human  society  he  must  have,  and 
he  cannot  help  comparing  things  as  they  are  with  things 

95 


g6       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

as  he  would  make  them.  It  is  the  ideal  which  he  ponders 
in  his  heart  which  gives  utterance  to  his  tongue.  His 
ideal  rules  him.  It  is  ever  before  him.  He  may  be  him- 
self unconscious  of  the  persistence  of  its  influence,  but  not 
the  less  that  influence  is  always  with  him  and  is  clearly 
traceable.  It  is  like  a  colored  glass  through  which  the 
light  of  the  mind  streams:  every  thought  comes  to  us 
tinged  with  the  ideal  conceptions  of  the  thinker.  When 
at  last  the  finished  work  of  a  poet  lies  before  us,  then  we 
perceive,  and  perhaps  he  also  perceives  for  the  first  time, 
that  there  is  a  unity  and  sharpness  of  outline  in  his  thought 
which  is  clear  and  distinctive.  A  hint  there,  a  phrase 
here,  a  verse  yonder — and  silently  the  underlying  thought 
of  the  poet  emerges.  Bone  comes  to  its  bone,  till  at  last, 
with  every  reticulation  complete,  the  skeleton  rises  clothed 
in  flesh,  and  the  ideal  of  human  life  which  was  jealously 
hidden  in  the  poet's  heart  stands  before  us  complete  and 
undisguised. 

Now,  perhaps  the  first  thing  that  occurs  to  the  reader 
who  approaches  Tennyson  from  this  point  of  view  is  his 
sense  of  order.  The  tendency  of  his  mind  is  distinctly 
conservative.  He  hears,  indeed,  "the  roll  of  the  ages," 
and  he  is  not  unconscious  of  the  revolutionary  elements 
which  seethe  in  society;  but  he  hears,  if  not  with  unsym- 
pathetic stoicism,  at  least  with  an  equanimity  too  settled 
for  disturbance.  He  is  full  of  reverence  for  antiquity,  he 
is  filled  with  an  all-sufficing  sense  of  the  perfection  and 
indestructible  stability  of  all  English  institutions.  His 
mind  is  too  calm  and  steady  to  be  sympathetic  toward  the 
passionate  revolts  and  despairing  heroisms  of  those  who 
seek  an  immediate  reform  of  society;  he  is,  indeed,  too 
cool  in  temper  to  catch  the  glow  of  such  movements  as 


Tennyson's  View  of  Life  and  Society        97 

these.  The  place  in  which  he  habitually  walks  and  medi- 
tates is  like  that  pathway  which  he  has  described  in  the 
"Gardener's  Daughter  "- 

A  well-worn  pathway  courted  us 
To  one  green  wicket  in  a  privet-hedge; 
This,  yielding,  gave  into  a  grassy  walk 
Thro'  crowded  lilac-ambush  trimly  pruned; 

And  over  many  a  range 
Of  waving  limes  the  gray  cathedral  towers, 
Across  a  hazy  glimmer  of  the  west, 
Reveal  their  shining  windows. 

Now,  what  are  the  details  of  this  picture?  What  is  the 
effect  it  produces  on  the  imagination?  The  chief  idea  it 
conveys  is  a  sense  of  perfect  order.  The  pathway  is  well- 
worn  with  the  feet  of  generations;  the  green  wicket  is 
framed  in  a  perfectly  neat  and  symmetrical  privet-hedge; 
the  lilac-bush,  in  its  utmost  joy  of  burgeoning  and  blos- 
som, must  be  allowed  no  license — it  is  "trimly  pruned"; 
and  finally,  as  if  to  complete  the  sense  of  well-established 
use,  of  absolute  propriety,  of  faultless  order  and  reverent 
conservatism,  the  gray  cathedral  walls  bound  the  view, 
and  the  shining  windows  seem  to  reflect  the  glory  of  the 
past.  In  this  passage  we  have  a  not  inapt  illustration  of 
the  strongest  tendency  of  Tennyson's  mind.  It  is  from 
such  a  neat  and  quiet  bower  of  peace  he  looks  out  upon  the 
world.  He  is  a  recluse,  shut  up  with  his  own  thoughts, 
and  weaving  the  bright  thread  of  his  fancy  far  from  the 
loud  commotions  of  the  world.  He  loves  to  surround 
himself  with  influences  which  minister  to  this  studious 
calm.  In  the  garden  where  he  walks  no  leaf  is  out  of 
place,  no  grass-blade  grows  awry.  If  the  world  he  looks 
upon  hardly  matches  the  spotless  propriety  of  his  retreat, 


98       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

yet,  at  least,  the  world  shows  itself  upon  the  whole  a  very 
proper  and  well-governed  world.  Accidents  will  happen 
in  the  best-regulated  societies,  but  in  England  at  all  events 
they  are  blessedly  rare.  Our  roots  run  deep  and  we 
stand  above  the  shocks  of  time.  We  have  gray  cathedrals, 
excellent  clergy,  gracious  noblemen,  stately  homes  sur- 
rounded by  the  greenest  of  lawns,  which  might  almost 
justify  the  eloquent  eulogism  of  the  Cambridge  gardener, 
who  remarked  that  such  turf  could  only  be  got  "by  mow- 
ing 'em  and  rolling  'em,  rolling  'em  and  mowing  'em,  for 
thousands  of  years!"  The  axiom,  that  "Order  is  heaven's 
first  law,"  has  been  fully  accepted  by  Tennyson,  and  has 
received  additional  development:  to  him  order  is  also 
earth's  best  excellence. 

One  has  only  to  glance  through  Tennyson's  poems  of 
modern  life  to  see  that  this  criticism  is  neither  spiteful  nor 
unjust.  He  is  usually  found  in  the  company  of  lords  and 
ladies,  princesses,  scholars,  and  generally  refined  people, 
whose  place  in  society  is  fully  assured.  There  are  excep- 
tions to  this  statement,  of  course,  which  will  occur  to 
every  reader.  He  has  studied  the  northern  farmer  to 
good  effect,  and  in  the  "May  Queen"  and  "Dora"  we 
have  admirable  pictures  of  country  life.  But  this  does 
not  affect  the  general  truth  of  the  statement.  Claribel, 
Lilian,  Isabel,  Mariana,  are  not  daughters  of  the  people. 
Lady  Clara  Vere  de  Vere  certainly  receives  condign  chas- 
tisement, but  still  she  is  Lady  Clara  Vere  de  Vere.  Maud 
lives  in  the  stately  hall,  and  the  village  where  her  lover 
meets  her  is  the  sort  of  perfect  village,  "with  blossomed 
gable-ends,"  which  we  only  see  upon  a  great  estate. 
When  he  bitterly  assails  a  lord,  it  is  a  new-made  lord, 
with  a  gewgaw  title  new  as  his  castle,  "master  of  half  a 


Tennyson's  View  of  Life  and  Society       99 

servile  shire,"  and  clothed  with  the  rank  insolence  of 
recent  wealth.  When  he  alludes  to  trade  it  is  with  the 
usual  aristocratic  contempt,  and  the  ear  of  the  merchant 

Is  crammed  with  his  cotton,  and  rings 
Even  in  dreams,  to  the  chink  of  his  pence. 

It  is  true  that  he  can  cry, 

Ah,  God,  for  a  man  with  a  heart,  head,  hand, 
Like  some  of  the  simple  great  ones  gone 

Forever  and  ever  by  : 
One  still  strong  man  in  a  blatant  land, 
Whatever  they  call  him,  what  care  I — 
Aristocrat,  democrat,  autocrat,  one 
Who  can  rule  and  dare  not  lie  ! 

But  this  is,  after  all,  merely  the  wail  of  an  angry  pessi- 
mism. It  is  the  sort  of  jeremiad  in  which  timid  minds 
usually  indulge  when  the  ancient  order  of  things  seems 
threatened.  Of  true  democratic  feeling  Tennyson  is  sin- 
gularly destitute.  His  leaning  is  all  the  other  way.  It  is 
the  sustained  splendor  and  delicate  refinement  of  aristo- 
cratic life  which  fascinate  him.  His  heart  is  with  the 
ancient  order  of  things,  and  all  his  modern  poems  breathe 
the  spirit  of  this  sentiment.  It  follows,  therefore,  that 
Tennyson  never  has  been,  and  never  can  be,  in  the  true 
sense,  a  people's  poet.  That  he  has  written  poems  which 
the  very  poorest  value,  and  which  might  rejoice  the  heart 
of  the  peasant,  we  gladly  admit.  Probably  the  "May 
Queen"  is  far  and  away  the  most  popular  poem  he  ever 
wrote,  and  it  is  so  because  it  touches  the  hearts  of  homely 
people.  But  in  the  main  there  is  little  for  the  common 
people  in  Tennyson's  poetry.  It  knocks  at  the  door  of 
the  lady's  bower,  but  not  at  the  poor  man's  cottage.  Its 
troops  of  knights  and  ladies,  and  exquisitely  dressed  and 


ioo     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

admirably  nurtured  people,  seem  out  of  place  amid  the 
coarse  realities  of  grimed  and  toiling  life.  To  those  who 
stand  among  the  shadows  of  life,  those  who  suffer  or  fight 
in  the  hard  battles  of  humanity,  and  feel  the  cruel  irony 
and  mockery  of  circumstance,  it  may  well  seem  that  Tenny- 
son's laudation  of  order  is  in  itself  an  irony,  that  the  pup- 
pets on  his  stage  know  little  of  the  great  throbbing  heart 
of  the  common  people,  and  that  their  fine  talk  is,  after  all, 
a  little  too  finical  to  pierce  into  the  most  secret  chambers 
of  the  human  memory. 

A  further  evidence  of  this  limitation  of  sympathy  in 
Tennyson  is  found  in  his  treatment  of  social  questions. 
He  does  not  ignore  them;  he  sees  them  indeed,  and  some 
of  his  lines,  such  as  the  following  from  the  opening  of 
"Maud,"  quiver  with  a  passionate  indignation: 

And  the  vitriol  madness  flushes  up  in  the  ruffian's  head 
Till  the  filthy  by-lane  rings  to  the  yell  of  the  trampled  wife, 

And  chalk  and  alum  and  plaster  are  sold  the  poor  for  bread, 
And  the  spirit  of  murder  works  in  the  very  means  of  life. 

But  it  is  not  in  mere  denunciation  of  existing  evils  that  the 
true  poet  should  spend  himself.  The  true  poet  seeks  to 
probe  the  heart  of  the  world's  sorrow,  and  we  turn  to  him 
to  know  what  verdict  he  can  give,  and  whether  there  is 
any  hope.  Tennyson  has  no  distinctive  reply  to  such 
questions  as  these,  or  if  any  reply,  it  is  a  hopeless  one. 
He  perceives  the  glorious  growth  of  science,  he  foreshad- 
ows the  vast  discoveries  of  a  larger  age,  he  is  sure  that 
on  the  whole  the  world  means  progress;  but  when  he 
brings  himself  face  to  face  with  the  actual  details  of  life 
lived  in  poverty,  squalor,  and  crime,  he  is  sullenly  unhope- 
ful. He  looks  upon  the  whole  question  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  comfortable  burgess,  not  of  the  poor  man  him- 


Tennyson's  View  of  Life  and  Society      101 

self  who  stands  amid  the  grime  of  the  actual  sacrifice. 
He  gazes  down  from  his  sunny  vantage-ground  of  esthetic 
refinement,  where  "no  wind  blows  roughly,"  and  ponders, 
speculates,  sympathises,  but  his  philosophic  calm  is  undis- 
turbed. He  never  steps  down  into  the  thick  of  the  strug- 
gle and  makes  those  who  unjustly  suffer  feel  that  in  him 
they  have  a  comrade  and  a  champion.  When  the  sudden 
light  of  some  glowing,  some  delusive  hope  is  flung  across 
their  wasted  faces,  he  is  quick  to  tell  them  that  the  hope 
is  delusive,  and  to  rebuke  them  for  their  excess  of  fond 
credulity.  One  of  his  characters  is  described  as  running — 

A  Malayan  muck  against  the  times; 

but  when  we  wait  to  be  told  exactly  in  what  his  offending 
lies,  we  find  that  it  simply  amounts  to  this,  that  he 

Had  golden  hopes  for  France  and  all  mankind. 

This  is  typical  of  Tennyson's  point  of  view  of  social  ques- 
tions. There  is  no  living  heat  of  enthusiasm  in  him:  he 
is  wrapped  in  a  chilly  mantle  of  reserve,  and  he  chills  the 
ardent  as  he  talks  with  them.  When  he  proposes  a  great 
concession  to  the  poor,  what  is  it? 

Why  should  not  these  great  sirs 
Give  up  their  parks  some  dozen  times  a  year 
To  let  the  people  breathe? 

That  is  all:  a  mere  act  of  justice,  an  imperfect  recognition 
of  the  truth  that  property  has  duties  as  well  as  privileges; 
but  it  is  announced  as  though  it  were  a  revolution,  and  as 
if  the  poet  himself  were  astonished  at  his  own  daring. 
Perhaps,  however,  the  sense  of  daring  is  not  surprising 
when  we  find  that  the  proposal  was  made  to  a  stalwart 
baronet — 


IO2     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

A  patron  of  some  thirty  charities, 
A  pamphleteer  on  guano  and  on  grain, 
A  quarter-sessions  chairman,  abler  none, 
Fair-haired,  and  redder  than  a  windy  morn. 

And  practically,  this  is  as  far  as  Tennyson  ever  goes 
in  his  treatment  of  social  questions.  He  does  not  really 
grasp  them.  He  does  not  understand  the  intensity  of 
peril  or  the  grave  considerations  of  justice  which  under- 
lie them.  He  stands  aloof,  in  the  company  of  baronets 
and  princesses,  courtly  and  cultured  people,  whose  life  is 
perfumed  with  pleasure  and  cut  off  from  all  intrusion  of 
tragic  misery;  those  who  fare  sumptuously  every  day,  to 
whom  poetry  is  an  exquisite  luxury  of  the  mind  as  fine 
color  is  to  the  eye,  or  delicate  flavor  to  the  appetite:  and 
it  is  to  these  Tennyson  sings,  and  it.  is  their  view  of  life 
which  finds  the  fullest  reflection  in  his  poetry. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  scientific  spirit  that  it  rigidly 
attends  to  facts  and  classifies  them,  finally  deducing  from 
them  great  laws  which  appear  to  underlie  and  control  all 
things.  Thus,  in  his  treatment  of  nature,  Tennyson's 
love  of  science  has  worked  in  the  direction  of  accuracy  of 
statement  and  fidelity  of  delineation.  But  in  his  view  of 
life  it  has  checked  generous  enthusiasm  and  produced 
coldness  of  temper.  The  survival  of  the  fittest  is  not  in 
truth  a  doctrine  likely  to  produce  a  sympathetic  temper 
toward  the  crippled  and  the  unfortunate.  It  does  indeed 
kindle  a  great  light  in  the  future.  It  pictures  the  final 
evolution  of  man  into  some  unimagined  state  of  strength 
and  joy,  when  he  shall  have  attained  his  majority  and 
entered  into  the  scientific  paradise  which  truth  is  prepar- 
ing for  him. 

So  many  a  million  of  ages  have  gone  to  the  making  of  man, 


Tennyson's  View  of  Life  and  Society      103 

that  we  may  well  consider  him,  not  as  having  reached  his 
true  height,  but  as  toiling  on  to  something  higher  even 
than  he  dreams.  But  however  bright  may  be  the  vision 
of  the  future,  the  survival  of  the  fittest  is  poor  comfort  in 
the  vast  interval.  It  has  nothing  to  say  to  the  halt  and 
maimed,  except  that  they  deserve  to  be  halt  and  maimed. 
It  can  rejoice  in  the  vast  movements  of  society,  which,  like 
immense  waves,  carry  it  onward  to  its  infinite  goal,  but  it 
has  no  compassion  for  the  lives  sacrificed  every  day  in 
this  predetermined  progress.  And  as  one  turns  over  the 
pages  of  Tennyson,  he  sometimes  finds  himself  wondering 
whether  Tennyson  has  ever  suffered  deeply.  Personal 
suffering,  the  agony  of  severed  love  which  comes  to  all, 
he  has  known;  but  there  is  another  form  of  sorrow,  the 
sorrow  of  early  disappointment  and  rebuff,  which  does  far 
more  to  educate  men  into  breadth  and  charity  of  view; 
and  by  the  buffeting  angels  of  vicissitude  he  has  been 
unvisited.  Life  may  be  too  fortunate,  things  may  go  too 
well  with  men  in  this  world.  The  liquor  of  life  may  cor- 
rupt with  excess  of  sweetness;  and  for  lack  of  that  whole- 
some bitter  of  disappointment,  which  is  God's  frequent 
medicine  to  the  greatest,  a  man's  heart  may  stagnate  in  an 
undiscerning  content.  Is  this  absence  of  vicissitude  part 
of  the  reason  for  the  comparative  limitation  of  sympathy 
which  we  find  in  Tennyson's  view  of  life?  He  has  been 
attended  by  worldly  fortune  and  success  never  before 
vouchsafed  to  any  English  poet.  How  different  the  life 
that  closed  in  sorrowful  isolation  at  Dumfries,  or  the  life 
cut  off  by  the  violence  of  tempest  at  Spezzia,  to  the  close 
of  this  life  in  fortune,  fame,  and  peerage!  How  different 
the  plain  life  and  simple  house  from  which  came  to  us  the 
"Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality"  to  the  cultured  life 


IO4     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

of  artistic  ease  in  which  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"  have 
been  slowly  fashioned  and  perfected  in  fastidious  patience ! 
Doubt  it  as  we  may,  resent  it  as  we  do,  nevertheless  the 
truth  remains  that  those  whose  words  live  longest  in  the 
hearts  of  men  have  "learned  in  suffering  what  they  taught 
in  song."  In  them  the  heart  has  most  maintained  a  child- 
like simplicity  and  sympathy,  and  to  them  it  has  been 
given  to  survey  life  with  the  largest  charity  of  hope.  Is 
it  this  lack  of  vicissitude  in  the  life  of  the  poet  himself 
which  has  dulled  the  larger  sympathies  of  his  nature  and 
narrowed  the  range  and  spirit  of  his  poetry?  Has  he  too 
long,  like  his  own  Maud, 

Fed  on  the  roses  and  lain  in 'the  lilies  of  life? 

It  is  hard  to  judge;  but  no  one  can  be  unconscious  of  the 
fact  of  this  limitation.  Its  causes  lie  partly  in  the  order 
of  the  poet's  life,  but  mainly  in  the  character  of  his  own 
mind,  which  is  dispassionate  rather  than  ardent,  philosophic 
rather  than  sympathetic,  and  better  fitted  to  touch  with 
subtle  delicacy  the  fringe  of  a  great  problem  than  to  pene- 
trate its  bloom  with  true  imaginative  insight. 

The  final  impression  which  we  take,  then,  from  the 
modern  poems  of  Tennyson  is,  that  his  view  of  life  and 
society  is  dull  and  conventional.  The  greater  portion  of 
his  poetry  consists  of  reproductions — reproductions  from 
the  antique,  from  the  mediaeval,  from  the  romantic.  And 
this  is  in  itself  significant,  because  it  shows  how  largely 
he  has  turned  his  mind  away  from  the  vision  of  the  present. 
When  he  touches  the  mediaeval  and  antique  world  he  is  at 
his  best.  All  the  graceful  qualities  of  his  mind  then  come 
into  play,  and  he  clothes  the  past  with  a  glamour  of  words 
which  soothes  the  mind  and  kindles  the  imagination  with 


Tennyson's  View  of  Life  and  Society      105 

a  keen  delight.  But  in  spite  of  all  his  attempts,  laborious 
and  partially  successful  as  they  are,  to  seize  the  modern 
spirit,  he  has  failed  in  the  main.  He  has  nothing  new  to 
say:  all  that  he  can  do  is  to  take  old  and  well-worn  ideas 
and  clothe  them  with  a  novelty  of  phrase  which  gives  them 
fresh  currency.  He  has  little  faculty  of  piercing  through 
the  husk  of  the  conventional  to  the  living  thoughts  and 
passions  of  man  which  throb  beneath.  He  passes  by,  as 
a  careless  tourist  might  pass  over  a  volcanic  district, 
admiring  the  flowers  and  color,  but  not  suspecting  the 
angry  fire  which  boils  below  his  feet.  He  finds  every- 
where just  what  conventional  opinion  says  you  ought  to 
find;  he  has  no  strength  to  tear  aside  the  thin  crust  and 
discover  the  passionate  possibilities  and  sad  realities  which 
are  decorously  hidden  from  the  thoughtless  eye.  He 
skims  the  surface:  he  does  not  probe  the  depth.  Divest 
his  figures  of  the  garb  of  musical  speech  in  which  they 
move,  and  there  is  nothing  left  but  commonplace  thought 
and  sentiment.  Like  the  "passon"  in  the  "Northern 
Farmer,"  they  say  what  they  "ow't  to  'a  said,"  and  we 
come  away  with  a  convincing  sense  of  their  entire  respec- 
tability. They  talk,  in  fact,  very  much  like  Anthony 
Trollope's  deans  and  churchmen,  who  look  out  upon  life 
with  a  curious  mixture  of  sedate  thoughtfulness  and  deco- 
rous conservatism.  The  general  effect  they  produce  upon 
the  mind  is  dullness.  But  if  Tennyson's  view  of  life  is 
dull,  and  his  opinions  commonplace,  we  cannot  but  admit 
that  all  that  the  art  of  the  most  perfect  phrasing  can  do  to 
cover  dullness  Tennyson  has  clone.  He  has,  indeed,  so 
dexterously  concealed  the  comparative  poverty  of  his 
thought  in  all  his  modern  poems  with  the  eloquence  and 
beauty  of  his  language  that  many  people  have  not  yet  dis- 


io6     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

covered  the  deception.  Nevertheless  it  is  there.  The 
fact  that  so  few  are  aware  of  it  is  sufficient  testimony  to 
the  perfection  of  the  artistic  illusion. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  How  does  a  poet  usually  work  out  his  philosophy  of  life? 

2.  How  is  "the  sense  of  order"  felt  in  Tennyson's  poems? 

3.  How  does  this  quality  of  his  character  affect  his  view  of 
human  society? 

4.  Why  is  he  not  in  the  true  sense  "  a  people's  poet  "? 

5.  Give  illustrations  of  his  treatment  of  great  social  ques- 
tions. 

6.  How  may  these  qualities  of  the  poet's  work  be  explained? 

7.  Why  is  the  commonplace  character  of  his  views  of  life 
not  always  perceived? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Tennyson :  His  Art  and  Relation  to  Modern  Life.  Stopford 
A.  Brooke. 

The  Poetry  of  Tennyson.     Henry  Van  Dyke. 

The  Mind  of  Tennyson. 

Literary  Studies  (  Wordsworth,  Tennyson  and  Browning), 
Vol.  II.  Walter  Bagehot. 


CHAPTER    XI 

IDYLLS  AND  THE  "IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING" 

We  have  now  come  to  the  point  in  our  study  of  Tenny- 
son where  his  two  greatest  poems,  the  "Idylls  of  the 
King"  and  "In  Memoriam,"  come  into  review.  There 
are,  however,  certain  groups  of  poems  which  can  scarcely 
be  passed  unmentioned;  and  before  turning  to  the  two 
greatest  works  of  Tennyson  it  may  be  well  to  glance  at 
these.  Everywhere  throughout  Tennyson's  books  there 
are  to  be  found  exquisite  clusters  of  lyrical  poems,  and  it 
may  be  said  with  confidence  that  in  this  domain  of  poetry 
his  power  is  unrivaled  and  his  excellence  supreme.  It  is 
this  excellence  which  redeems  "Maud,"  in  all  other 
respects  the  weakest  and  least  artistic  of  his  long  poems. 
The  "Princess,"  again,  wearisome  and  dull  as  it  becomes 
in  parts,  contains  three  or  four  of  the  most  musical  lyrics 
Tennyson  has  ever  written,  and  snatches  of  melody  which 
will  bear  comparison  with  the  finest  lyrics  in  the  language. 
The  art  in  which  Tennyson's  rarest  excellence  lies,  the 
art  of  musical  expression,  the  subtle  cadence  of  rhythm 
which  produces  a  recurring  and  never-forgotten  sweetness 
in  the  memory,  is  seen  at  its  very  best  in  these  short  and 
lovely  lyrics.  The  lines  in  the  "Princess"  commencing, 

The  splendor  falls  on  castle  walls, 

may  be  mentioned  in  this  category  as  the  nearest  approach 
to  the  effect  of  fine  music  which  language  is  able  to  pro- 
icy 


io8      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

duce,  and  in  glamour  and  sweetness  they  are  unapproached 
by  any  modern  poet.  Of  poems  like  these  nothing  can 
be  said  but  praise.  They  have  gone  far  to  constitute  the 
charm  of  Tennyson.  They  have  found  their  way  into  the 
general  memory  without  effort,  by  virtue  of  an  enchant- 
ment all  their  own.  They  will  probably  be  remembered 
when  much  of  his  more  ambitious  work  is  forgotten. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  already  this  process  has  been 
accomplished  in  part,  and  the  chief  thing  which  preserves 
"Maud"  from  oblivion  is  the  famous  garden  song,  "Come 
into  the  Garden,  Maud,"  one  of  the  most  finished  and 
impassioned  lyrics  that  is  to  be  found  in  the  whole  range 
of  modern  English.  In  lyrical  power  and  sweetness,  in 
the  power  of  uttering  that  "lyrical  cry,"  as  it  has  been 
called,  that  species  of  poem  which  is,  in  truth,  not  so 
much  a  poem  as  a  cry,  a  voice,  a  gust  of  thrilling  music — 
in  this  art  Tennyson  has  few  rivals  and  no  peer. 

To  another  class  of  poems  in  which  Tennyson  has 
attained  high  excellence  he  has  himself  given  an  appro- 
priate title  when  he  calls  them  English  Idylls.  The  more 
famous  is  "Enoch  Arden, "  the  most  exquisite  is  "Dora." 
When  "Enoch  Arden"  was  published,  great  exception  was 
taken  to  its  method  and  structure,  and  its  obvious  want  of 
simplicity  in  diction  was  held  to  disqualify  its  title  to  be 
called  an  Englishid  yll.  In  subject  it  is  purely  idyllic;  in 
diction  it  is  elaborately  ornate.  One  of  the  acutest  and 
most  brilliant  of  English  critics,  Mr.  Walter  Bagehot,  has 
pointed  out  the  fact  that  in  no  single  instance  throughout 
the  poem  is  Tennyson  content  to  speak  in  the  language  of 
simplicity.  The  phrases  are  often  happy,  often  express- 
ive, but  always  stiff  with  an  elaborate  word-chiseling. 
To  express  the  very  homely  circumstance  that  Enoch 


Idylls  and  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"       109 

Arden  was  a  fisherman  and  sold  fish,  we  are  told  that  he 
vended  "ocean-spoil  in  ocean-smelling  osier."  The  de- 
scription of  the  gateway  of  the  Hall  is  almost  pretentious 
in  its  combination  of  complex  phrases:  "portal-warding 
lion- whelp,  and  the  peacock  yew-tree."  This  is  no  doubt 
an  excellent  description  of  tropic  scenery: 

The  sunrise  broken  into  scarlet  shafts, 

Among  the  palms  and  ferns  and  precipices; 

The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  east, 

The  blaze  upon  his  island  overhead; 

Then  the  great  stars  that  globed  themselves  in  Heaven, 

The  hollower-bellowing  ocean,  and  again 

The  scarlet  shafts  of  sunrise — but  no  sail. 

But  this  is  not  a  shipwrecked  sailor's  description  of  what 
he  would  see,  nor  is  there  a  single  phrase  such  as  a 
homely  seaman  would  be  likely  to  use  in  all  this  elaborate 
passage.  "The  hollower-bellowing  ocean"  is  a  combi- 
nation such  as  an  ornate  poet,  anxious  to  combine  his 
impressions  in  a  complex  phrase,  might  use;  but  it  would 
not  by  any  possibility  be  the  phrase  of  Enoch  Arden.  As 
an  English  idyll,  therefore,  "Enoch  Arden"  fails.  As  a 
poem  of  the  ornate  school  it  is  excellent.  But  in  "Dora" 
we  have  the  simplest  story  of  country  life  told  in  the  sim- 
plest words,  and  with  an  almost  Wordsworthian  austerity 
of  phrase.  There  is  nothing  to  disturb  the  charm  of  per- 
fect verisimilitude.  It  is,  however,  a  poem  almost  by 
itself.  Nowhere  else  does  Tennyson  work  so  high  an 
effect  by  such  simple  means.  In  the  main  he  is  an  ornate 
poet  and  errs  in  over-elaboration  of  phrase.  In  the 
"Idylls  of  the  King"  the  same  strength  and  weakness  are 
always  associated,  and  the  excellence  and  defect  run  side 
by  side.  As  his  narrative  rises  in  passion  the  phraseology 


no      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

becomes  terser,  clearer,  less  involved;  when  his  invention 
slackens,  and  his  poetic  impulse  ebbs,  he  always  falls  back 
upon  elaborate  phrase-coining  to  cover  his  defect.  The 
result  is  a  curious  combination  such  as  exists  in  no  other 
poet.  In  a  score  of  pages  we  pass  a  dozen  times  from 
the  noble  severity  of  Wordsworth  to  the  fanciful  conceit 
of  Keats.  It  is  never  difficult  to  know  how  the  tide  of 
poetic  impulse  runs  in  Tennyson:  when  the  impulse  is 
strong  the  style  clarifies  into  nervous  simplicity;  when 
weak,  it  abounds  in  ornate  decoration  and  scholastic  word- 
mongering. 

The  "Idylls  of  the  King"  are  the  work  of  Tennyson's 
mature  manhood,  and  give  us  the  ripest  result  of  his  art. 
The  history  of  their  inception  and  completion  is  curious; 
it  covers  fifty  years,  beginning  with  a  lyric;  "then  with 
an  epical  fragment  and  three  more  lyrics;  then  with  a 
poem,  'Enid  and  Nimue, '  which  is  suppressed  as  soon  as 
it  is  written;  then  with  four  romantic  idylls,  followed  ten 
years  later  by  four  others,  and  two  years  later  by  two 
others,  and  thirteen  years  later  by  yet  another  idyll,  which 
is  to  be  placed  not  before  or  after  the  rest,  but  in  the  very 
center  of  the  cycle."  Thus  the  world  of  Arthurian 
romance  is  first  touched  in  the  "Lady  of  Shalott,"  pub- 
lished in  1832;  and  last,  in  "Balin  and  Balan, "  published 
in  1885. 

Since  the  completion  of  the  "Idylls"  Tennyson  has 
written  little  of  really  first-rate  excellence  or  gravity.  His 
finest  thoughts  and  finest  lines  are  here.  They  are  his 
magnum  opus,  and  on  them  his  claim  to  fame  must  largely 
rest.  In  the  life  of  every  great  poet  there  comes  a  time 
when  a  desire  seizes  him  to  accomplish  some  great  de- 
sign, a  poem  on  a  scale  of  magnitude  which  shall  give 


Idylls  and  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"       in 

scope  to  all  his  qualities.  As  a  rule,  such  ambitions  have 
resulted  in  failure.  Wordsworth  is  not  known,  after  all, 
by  his  "Excursion,"  but  by  his  lyrics  and  his  "Ode  on 
Immortality."  Mrs.  Browning's  "Drama  of  Exile"  can- 
not contest  the  awards  of  fame  with  the  "Lines  on 
Cowper's  Grave."  The  only  long  poem  by  an  English 
author  which  has  held  an  uncontested  place  in  memory  is 
Milton's  "Paradise  Lost,"  and  it  has  been  pointed  out 
that  this  is  largely  owing  to  the  fact  that  it  is  written  in 
sections,  and  each  section  can  be  read  at  a  sitting.  No 
doubt  Tennyson  was  fully  conscious  of  the  peril  of  his 
task,  and  the  warning  of  these  great  examples,  when  he 
began  to  work  upon  the  "Idylls."  He  began  at  the  end 
of  his  theme,  with  the  "Morte  d' Arthur, "  as  though  to 
judge  of  his  chances  of  success  by  an  experiment  on  the 
public  taste.  He  was  fortunate  also  in  the  choice  of  a 
subject.  In  the  noble  myths  which  had  gathered  round 
King  Arthur  there  was  a  vast  field  of  poetry  which  was 
wholly  unworked.  Over  and  above  their  moral  and  poetic 
elements  they  possessed  a  national  value.  For  Tennyson 
they  had  always  had  a  peculiar  charm,  and  we  are  told 
that  in  his  solitary  boyhood  at  Somersby  a  favorite 
recreation  was  to  enact  scenes  from  the  Round  Table 
with  his  brothers.  These  myths  provided  him  with 
precisely  what  he  was  least  able  to  provide  himself,  a 
splendid  story,  or  series  of  stories,  ready  to  his  hand. 
No  critical  reader  can  help  noticing  that  in  the  power  of 
pure  invention  Tennyson  is  singularly  weak.  It  is  the 
weakness  of  his  invention  which  led  to  the  vicious  elabo- 
ration of  style  which  we  have  remarked  in  "Enoch  Arden." 
But  in  the  old  chronicle  of  Sir  Thomas  Malory  of  the 
fabulous  deeds  of  the  Knights  of  the  Round  Table  there 


H2      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

is  a  series  of  stories  complete  in  every  incident  and  detail. 
The  chronicle  is  full  of  graphic  force  and  poetic  merit.  It 
is  indeed  so  full  of  the  genuine  elements  of  poetry  that 
many  persons  who  have  carefully  read  Sir  Thomas 
Malory  refuse  to  think  that  Tennyson  has  improved  upon 
him.  In  many  senses  he  has  not.  He  has  often  failed 
where  Malory  is  strongest,  necessarily,  perhaps,  because  to 
make  Malory  acceptable  to  modern  ears  it  was  needful  to 
smooth  over  a  good  many  awkward  details.  But  what 
Tennyson  has  done  is  to  imbue  the  old  chronicle  with  new 
life  and  spirit,  to  interpret  it  by  a  Christian  insight,  and 
to  apply  its  ancient  lessons  to  the  complex  conditions  of 
modern  life  and  thought. 

Probably  one  reason  why  Tennyson  chose  Sir  Thomas 
Malory's  famous  chronicle  for  his  greatest  experiment  in 
verse  was,  that  it  exactly  coincided  with  his  own  natural 
bent  toward  romantic  allegory.  We  have  to  remember 
the  force  of  the  pre-Raphaelite  movement,  as  it  was  called, 
if  we  are  to  understand  the  reasons  of  Tennyson's  choice. 
From  the  simple  nature-worship  of  Wordsworth,  and  the 
more  ethereal  and  ecstatic  nature-worship  of  Shelley,  there 
had  come  a  revulsion  toward  the  glowing  spectacle  of 
mediaeval  life  and  the  chivalrous  bent  of  mediaeval 
thought.  Just  as  the  publication  of  the  "Reliques 
of  English  Ballad  Poetry,"  by  Bishop  Percy,  in  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  worked  a  revival  of 
mediaeval  sentiment,  whose  best  fruit  is  found  in  the  great 
romances  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  so  the  experiments  of  Ros- 
setti  and  Morris  worked  a  similar  revival  in  our  own. 
Among  the  weird  half-lights  of  mediaeval  history  there  lay 
a  land  of  old  romance,  full  of  material  for  the  poet. 
Tennyson's  "Lady  of  Shalott,"  "Sir  Galahad,"  and  "St. 


Idylls  and  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"       113 

Agnes"  were  early  experiments  in  this  field  of  poetry,  and 
indicate  how  deeply  he  had  felt  its  fascination.  It  was 
only  natural  that  he  should  pursue  the  clue  which  he  had 
thus  discovered.  In  the  mediaeval  England  of  knight  and 
lady,  tournament  and  battle,  spell  and  incantation,  adven- 
ture and  romance,  Tennyson  found  an  atmosphere  entirely 
suited  to  his  genius.  It  was  the  land  of  glamour  and 
enchantment.  There  the  imagination  and  fancy  could 
move  untrammeled.  Every  knight  was  brave  and  every 
lady  fair.  Magnificent  spectacles  continually  passed  before 
the  imagination,  and  afforded  a  decorative  artist  like 
Tennyson  the  finest  possible  opportunity  for  the  exercise 
of  that  species  of  art  in  which  he  most  excelled.  And  over 
and  above  all  this,  there  ran  throughout  the  record  of  the 
history  a  strong  moral  sentiment,  a  deep  religious  bias. 
The  fall  of  King  Arthur's  Round  Table  was  the  fall  of  a 
kingdom,  and  the  causes  of  its  fall  were  moral  causes. 
In  this  respect  it  was  more  than  a  mere  mediaeval  record: 
it  was  an  eternal  parable  of  human  life.  It  touched  the 
moral  sense  in  Tennyson,  which  had  always  been  quick 
and  sensitive.  What  theme  was  there  more  likely  to 
stimulate  his  genius  than  this,  and  more  suitable  for  a 
great  epic  ?  The  greatest  of  all  themes  Milton  had  taken, 
but  even  if  he  had  not,  it  was  too  late  to  write  a  religious 
epic.  The  "Paradise  Lost"  could  only  have  been  written 
in  a  theological  age — an  age  like  the  Puritan,  deeply  satu- 
rated with  the  theological  spirit.  To  hit  the  taste  of  the 
nineteenth  century  an  epic  might  be  a  morality,  but  it 
needed  also  human  sentiment  and  passion  in  all  their  full- 
ness. With  that  perfect  artistic  insight  which  has  rarely 
failed  him,  Tennyson  saw  the  value  of  his  theme,  and  the 
result  is,  that  he  has  produced  the  only  long  poem  which 


H4      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

has  been  read  by  multitudes  since  "Paradise  Lost,"  and 
a  poem  which,  in  parts  at  least,  may  fairly  challenge  com- 
parison with  the  noblest  work  of  Milton. 

The  "Idylls  of  the  King,"  as  Tennyson  handles  them, 
are  a  very  different  thing  from  the  simple  chronicle  of 
Malory.  It  is  extremely  interesting  to  compare  passages 
and  see  how  far  Tennyson  has  followed  and  where  he  has 
left  Malory.  As  regards  the  story  itself,  he  has  inserted 
many  poetic  fancies,  but  he  has  invented  little  or  nothing. 
The  incidents  run  parallel.  In  some  points,  as  we  have 
said,  there  is  a  graphic  force  in  Malory  which  we  miss  in 
Tennyson,  and  the  short,  simple  words  of  the  mediaeval 
chronicler  produce  a  deeper  effect  upon  the  mind  than  the 
rich  and  subtle  diction  of  the  modern  poet.  It  is  the 
difference  between  the  rude  but  thrilling  ballad  tune  and 
the  skillful  variations  made  upon  it  by  a  great  musical  com- 
poser. In  Malory  we  think  of  the  theme;  in  Tennyson 
more  frequently  of  the  artist.  But  if  any  one  desires  to 
see  how  finely  a  poetic  fancy  can  breathe  life  into  a  bald 
history,  he  has  only  to  mark  how  faithfully  Tennyson  has 
seized  upon  the  salient  points  of  Malory  and  what  a 
wealth  of  artistic  skill  he  has  lavished  on  them;  for  the 
chief  fact  to  be  observed  in  Tennyson's  use  of  Malory  is, 
that  to  the  plain  facts  of  the  chronicler  he  always  gives  an 
allegorical  significance.  He  never  loses  sight  of  the  moral 
lesson.  King  Arthur  stands  out  as  a  mystic  incarnation, 
a  Christ-man — pure,  noble,  unerring — coming  mysteri- 
ously into  the  world  and  vanishing  mysteriously,  accord- 
ing to  the  prophecy  of  Merlin : 

From  the  great  deep  to  the  great  deep  he  goes. 
He  is  the  perfect  flower  of  purity  and  chivalry,  and  the 


Idylls  and  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"       115 

kingdom  he  seeks  to  found  is  the  very  kingdom  of  Christ 
upon  the  earth.  Lancelot,  in  many  respects  the  more 
subtle  and  powerful  study,  is  of  the  earth,  earthy,  and  by 
turns  base  and  noble,  and  rightly  describes  himself  in  the 
hour  of  his  remorse: 

In  me  there  dwells 

No  greatness,  save  it  be  some  far-off  touch 
Of  greatness  to  know  well  I  am  not  great: 
There  is  the  man. 

It  is  round  these  two  men  and  Guinevere  that  the  great 
interest  of  the  poem  culminates.  The  very  over-nobleness 
of  Arthur  works  disaster,  and  Guinevere  cries: 

He  is  all  fault  who  has  no  fault  at  all, 

For  who  loves  me  must  have  a  touch  of  earth; 

The  low  sun  makes  the  color. 

The  pathos  of  the  whole  poem  is,  that  in  Arthur  we  have 
the  incarnation  of  a  high  ideal  which  men  vainly  strive 
after,  and  its  tragedy  is,  that  men  do  strive  vainly,  and  that 
all  the  noble  work  of  Arthur  is  undone  by  the  weakness 
and  folly  of  his  followers.  In  the  lesser  characters  of  the 
epic  the  allegorical  bent  is  more  fully  developed.  Sir 
Galahad  is  the  type  of  glorified  asceticism,  visionary  aims, 
spirit  triumphant  over  flesh,  but  after  all  following  wander- 
ing fires  in  a  vain  quest,  and  "leaving  human  wrongs  to 
right  themselves."  "Gareth  and  Lynette"  is  but  a  vari- 
ation of  the  story  of  Arthur  and  Guinevere,  and  it  points 
to  the  severity  of  struggle  which  awaits  him  who  over- 
comes the  flesh.  In  this  poem  the  allegory  is  more 
distinct  and  beautiful  than  in  either  of  the  others,  and 
Tennyson  has  given  us  no  nobler  conception  of  victory 
over  death  than  this: 


n6      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

The  huge  pavilion  slowly  yielded  up 
Thro'  those  black  foldings  that  which  housed  within; 
High  on  a  night-black  horse,  in  night-black  arms, 
In  the  half-light,  thro'  the  dim  dawn,  advanced 
The  monster,  and  then  paused,  and  spake  no  word. 

It  is  the  King  of  Terrors,  the  spectral  form  of  the  last 
enemy.  But  when  Gareth  rides  forth  to  the  combat,  and 
strikes  the  helm  of  his  grisly  foe — 

Out  from  this 

Issued  the  bright  face  of  a  blooming  boy, 
Fresh  as  a  flower  new-born. 

And  this  is  immortality,  the  life  which  springs  out  of 
death. 

Of  the  tenderness  of  "Lancelot  and  Elaine,"  with  its 
immortal  picture  of  the  dead  Elaine  sailing  to  her  last 
home,  oared  by  the  dumb  servitor;  the  grandeur  of  the 
"Last  Tournament,"  with  its  ever-present  sense  of  deso- 
lation; the  unapproachable  pathos  of  "Guinevere,"  in- 
creasing stanza  by  stanza  in  passionate  depth  and  tragic 
force,  till  we  reach  the  parting  with  Arthur  in  the  misty 
darkness,  amid  the  faint  blowing  of  the  unhappy  trumpets; 
and  of  the  solemnity  of  the  "Passing  of  Arthur, "  with  its 
dramatic  fullness,  its  farewell  counsels  of  neglected  wisdom, 
its  tragic  mixture  of  human  despair  and  mystic  heavenly 
hope — of  these  poems  it  is  needless  to  speak.  If  we  had 
to  choose  the  greatest  poem  of  Tennyson,  we  should 
choose  "Guinevere";  if  the  most  solemnly  impressive,  the 
"Passing  of  Arthur."  Nothing  which  he  has  written 
rivals  these  two,  or  approaches  them  in  the  highest  quali- 
ties of  poetry.  They  are  the  mature  work  of  a  great 
poet.  They  express  his  deepest  convictions  and  sum  up 
his  best  wisdom.  Such  passages  as — 


Idylls  and  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"       117 

More  things  are  wrought  by  prayer 
Than  this  world  dreams  of.    Wherefore  let  thy  voice 
Rise  like  a  fountain  for  me  night  and  day; 
For  what  are  men  better  than  sheep  or  goats 
That  nourish  a  blind  life  within  the  brain, 
If,  knowing  God,  they  lift  not  hands  of  prayer 
Both  for  themselves  and  those  who  call  them  friend? 
For  so  the  whole  round  earth  is  every  way 
Bound  by  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God; 


or- 


The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 

And  God  fulfills  Himself  in  many  ways, 

Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world — 

have  already  passed  into  the  permanent  currency  of  litera- 
ture. They  contain  noble  truths  nobly  expressed.  And 
among  the  artistic  lessons  of  the  "Idylls  of  the  King" 
none  is  better  worth  marking  than  the  perfection  of 
Tennyson's  blank  verse.  Blank  verse  is  the  one  distinc- 
tively English  measure,  and  the  most  difficult  of  all. 
Apparently  it  is  easy  of  attainment;  in  reality  there  is 
nothing  harder.  There  is  no  form  of  verse  which  so 
severely  tests  the  ear  and  musical  faculty  of  a  great  poet. 
Keats  attempted  it  in  "Hyperion"  with  magnificent  suc- 
cess, but  he  gave  it  up  after  that  one  supreme  effort. 
Wordsworth's  success  is  only  partial,  and  there  are  many 
passages  in  the  "Excursion"  which  are  little  better  than 
prose  cut  up  into  metrical  lengths.  Byron  never  touched 
it  without  complete  failure.  Milton  only  has  chosen  it  as 
his  supreme  method  of  utterance  for  epic  poetry,  and  he 
has  used  it  as  only  a  giant  could  use  it.  Next  to  Milton 
stands  Tennyson.  He  sinks  far  below  Milton  in  grandeur, 
but  he  excels  him  in  musical  modulation.  He  does  not 
fill  the  air  with  the  wave-like  majesty  of  sound  and  move- 


n8      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

ment  which  characterize  Milton,  but  he  soothes  it  with  an 
unfailing  melody  of  phrase.  It  is  so  distinctive  that  the 
merest  tyro  could  not  fail  to  recognize  the  peculiar  charm 
of  Tennyson's  blank  verse  and  distinguish  it  at  once  in 
any  company.  Often  it  is  mannered,  and  mannerism  is 
always  a  vice.  But  in  the  finest  qualities  of  assonance 
and  resonance  Tennyson  rarely  fails.  His  verse  moves 
with  perfect  ease,  with  perfect  music,  with  perfect 
strength;  and  apart  from  the  charm  of  thought  and  sub- 
ject, the  "Idylls  of  the  King"  show  his  metrical  talent  in 
its  finest  operation.  But  the  theme  also  is  great  and 
solemn,  and  in  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"  we  have  his 
noblest  work,  and  work  such  as  the  very  greatest  poets 
might  have  been  proud  to  produce  and  covetous  to  claim. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  How  do  Tennyson's  gifts  show  at  their  best  in  his  lyric 
poems? 

2.  How  do  his  two  "idylls"  illustrate  some  of  his  most 
characteristic  traits? 

3.  In  what  order  did  Tennyson  produce  "The  Idylls  of  the 
King"? 

4.  What  has  been  the  experience  of  many  poets  with  great 
literary  projects? 

5.  What  were  some  of  Tennyson's  reasons  for  selecting  the 
Arthur  legends  for  his  greatest  work? 

6.  How  do  Tennyson's  "  Idylls "  compare   with   Malory's 
chronicle? 

7.  In  what  does  the  pathos  of  the  poem  consist? 

8.  Why  do  his  "Idylls  of  the  King"  rank  as  his  noblest 
work? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Tennyson :   His  A  rt  and  Relation  to  Modern  Life.    Stopford 
A.  Brooke. 

The  Poetry  of  Tennyson.     Henry  Van  Dyke. 
Essays  on  the  Idylls  of  the  King.     Harold  Littledale. 
Studies  in  the  Idylls  of  the  King.     Henry  Elsdale. 


CHAPTER    XII 

TENNYSON'S  "IN  MEMORIAM" 

We  now  come  to  the  most  distinctive,  and  in  many 
essential  characteristics,  the  greatest  of  Tennyson's 
poems,  "In  Memoriam."  Published  in  1850,  it  is  the 
work  of  his  prime,  and  contains  the  most  perfect  repre- 
sentation of  his  genius.  The  personal  history  on  which  it 
is  founded  is  well  known.  ^  It  commemorates  one  of  the 
noblest  of  human  friendships,  and  one  of  the  noblest  of 
men.  Arthur  Hallam,  the  son  of  Henry  Hallam,  the 
celebrated  historian,  was  born  in  Bedford  Place,  London, 
on  the  1st  of  February,  1811.  The  family  afterward 
removed  to  Wimpole  Street,  which  is  thus  described  in 
"In  Memoriam": 

Dark  house,  by  which  once  more  I  stand, 
Here  in  the  long,  unlovely  street, 
Doors,  where  my  heart  was  wont  to  beat 

So  quickly,  waiting  for  a  hand. 

In  October,  1828,  Arthur  Hallam  went  into  residence  at 
Cambridge,  and  it  was  there  he  met  Tennyson.  The 
affection  which  sprang  up  between  them  must  have  been 
immediate,  for  in  1830  we  find  them  discussing  a  plan  for 
publishing  conjointly  a  volume  of  poems.  One  of  Tenny- 
son's most  striking  phrases  in  the  "Palace  of  Art,"  "the 
abysmal  deeps  of  personality,"  is  directly  borrowed  from 
a  phrase  of  Hallam's:  "God — with  whom  alone  rest  the 
abysmal  secrets  of  personality."  It  was  one  of  those  rare 

119 


I2O      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

and  beautiful  friendships  which  sometimes  visit  the  morning 
hours  of  life,  in  which  intellectual  sympathy,  not  less  than 
love,  plays  a  foremost  part.  On  the  1 5th  of  September, 

1833,  Arthur  Hallam  lay  dead.     On  the  3d  of  January, 

1834,  his  body  was  brought  over  from  Vienna,  where  he 
died,  and  was  interred  in  manor  aisle,  Clevedon  Church,* 
Somersetshire — 

The  Danube  to  the  Severn  gave 

The  darkened  heart  that  beat  no  more; 
They  laid  him  by  the  pleasant  shore, 

And  in  the  hearing  of  the  wave. 

There  twice  a  day  the  Severn  fills; 
The  salt  sea-water  passes  by, 
And  hushes  half  the  babbling  Wye, 

And  makes  a  silence  in  the  hills. 

When  and  where  "In  Memoriam"  was  conceived  or 
commenced  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  know,  but  it  will  thus 
be  seen  that  seventeen  years  elapsed  between  the  death  of 
Arthur  Hallam  and  the  publication  of  Tennyson's  exquisite 
elegy.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  poem  was  actually  in 
process  of  construction  during  the  whole  of  this  long 
period,  for  it  bears  in  itself  marks  of  slow  growth,  of 
gradual  accretion  and  elaboration.  Probably  the  work  was 
begun  with  one  or  two  of  the  earlier  sections,  which  simply 
bewail  in  poignant  verse  Tennyson's  sense  of  unspeakable 
loss,  and  which  possess  the  solemnity  and  self-contained- 
ness  of  separate  funeral  hymns,  rather  than  the  consecu- 
tiveness  of  an  elaborate  poem.  The  history  and  character 
of  the  poem  sustain  this  view.  In  seventeen  years  the 
anguish  of  the  deepest  sorrow  must  needs  show  signs  of 

*  In  the  first  edition  of  "  In  Memoriam ''  Tennyson  says  in  "  the 
chancel."  This  was  not  strictly  correct,  and  is  altered  in  subsequent  editions 
to  "  dark  Church." 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  121 

healing.  Grief  grows  less  clamant  and  more  meditative. 
It  passes  somewhat  out  of  the  region  of  personal  bitter- 
ness into  the  realms  of  philosophic  reflection  and  religious 
resignation.  Time  does  not  destroy  the  sense  of  loss,  but 
it  lifts  the  soul  to  a  place  of  broader  outlook  and  calmer 
vision.  As  we  read  "In  Memoriam"  this  process  is 
clearly  detailed,  and  there  is  much  in  the  structure  of  the 
poem  to  suggest  that  from  a  few  mournful  verses,  cast  off 
in  the  bitterest  hour  of  bereavement  as  a  solace  to  the 
wounded  spirit,  Tennyson  gradually  enlarged  his  plan,  till 
he  had  woven  into  it  all  the  philosophic  doubts,  the  reli- 
gious hopes,  the  pious  aspirations,  which  the  theme  of 
human  loss  could  suggest  to  a  thoughtful  mind  and  noble 
spirit. 

Concerning  the  general  structure  and  character  of  the 
poem,  one  or  two  things  are  worth  remark.  It  differs 
essentially  from  any  other  elegy  in  the  English  language, 
both  as  to  metrical  arrangement  and  artistic  color.  English 
literature  is  not  rich  in  elegy,  but  it  possesses  in  Milton's 
"Lycidas, "  in  Gray's  famous  poem,  in  Shelley's  "Ado- 
nais, "  and  perhaps  in  Arnold's  noble  lamentation  for  his 
father  and  his  "Thyrsis," 'isolated  specimens  of  elegiac 
poetry  as  fine  as  any  literature  can  boast.  Of  these  great 
elegies,  Shelley's  "Adonais"  is  the  longest  and  the  no- 
blest; Milton's  "Lycidas"  the  most  classic  in  gravity  and 
sweetness;  Gray's  "Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard"  the 
most  perfectly  polished;  Arnold's  "Lines  in  Rugby 
Chapel"  the  most  effective  in  moral  view  and  spirit.  But 
of  the  last  two  it  will  be  at  once  perceived  that  neither 
aims  at  the  constructive  breadth  of  a  prolonged  poem,  nor 
would  the  metrical  form  sustain  the  burden  of  great  length. 
The  constant  evil  which  menaces  elegy  is  monotony,  and 


122      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

it  is  the  most  difficult  to  be  avoided  by  the  very  nature  of 
the  theme.  Gray  avoids  it  by  aiming  at  aphoristic  brevity, 
and  by  polishing  every  phrase  with  the  most  consummate 
artistic  skill  and  patience.  Arnold  adopls  for  his  purpose 
a  peculiar  unrhymed  meter,  which  stimulates  the  ear  with- 
out wearying  it,  but  which  could  not  be  sustained  except 
within  the  limits  of  brevity  which  he  has  set  for  himself. 
Milton  is  similarly  brief,  and  "Lycidas"  reads  more  like  a 
noble  fragment  of  the  antique  than  an  English  poem  writ- 
ten for  English  readers.  No  doubt  Milton's  genius  would 
have  served  him  perfectly  if  he  had  attempted  a  "Lycidas" 
of  thrice  the  length,  for  he  has  attempted  no  form  of 
poetry  without  absolute  success;  but  however  that  may 
be,  he  was  taught  by  his  artistic  instincts  in  writing  elegy 
to  compress  within  the  narrowest  limits  of  space  his  lament 
for  the  noble  dead.  Shelley  does  indeed  write  at  length, 
but  there  are  two  things  to  sustain  him  in  his  daring  effort: 
first,  he  uses  a  meter  singularly  pliable  and  resonant;  and 
secondly,  he  leaves  his  theme  at  will,  and  weaves  into  his 
poem  a  hundred  exquisite  suggestions  of  natural  beauty 
and  imaginative  vision,  so  that  while  his  theme  is  mourn- 
ful his  poem  is  often  ecstatic,  and  monotony  is  avoided  by 
richness  of  fancy  and  variety  of  theme.  In  what  respects 
does  "In  Memoriam"  differ  from  these  great  masterpieces? 
Wherein  does  its  distinctive  charm  and  greatness  lie? 

In  the  first  place,  it  differs  entirely  in  metrical  form  and 
arrangement.  Properly  speaking,  it  is  hymnal  in  form. 
Some  of  its  stanzas  are  admirably  suited  for  Christian 
worship,  and  no  doubt  will  appear,  with  slight  alterations, 
in  the  hymnal  collections  of  the  future.  In  this  respect  it 
is  distinctively  English,  and  appeals  strongly  to  English 
tastes.  But  what  is  there  that  could  be  conceived  as 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  123 

more  monotonous  than  a  hymn  of  a  thousand  stanzas? 
The  hymnal  form  may  be  excellently  suited  for  elegy,  but 
how  is  it  possible  to  combine  a  form  in  itself  monotonous 
with  a  theme  whose  chief  peril  is  monotony,  without  pro- 
ducing a  poem  which  would  be  insufferably  dull  and  tedi- 
ous? That  was  the  problem  Tennyson  had  to  solve,  and 
he  solved  it  in  two  ways.  Instead  of  the  ordinary  hymnal 
quatrain,  he  adopted  a  form,  not  unknown  indeed  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  but  virtually  new  to  modern  readers,  in 
which  the  first  and  last  and  the  two  middle  lines  of  the 
verses  rhyme.  Any  one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  com- 
pare these  forms  will  at  once  see  how  greatly  Tennyson's 
variation  gains  in  modulation  and  flexibility.  He  had 
already  attempted  it  in  one  of  his  earlier  poems,  "Love 
thou  thy  land  with  love  far  brought,"  and  had  no  doubt 
been  struck  with  its  power  of  musical  expression.  If,  as 
we  surmise,  "In  Memoriam"  grew  slowly  from  certain 
fragmentary  stanzas,  thrown  off  in  the  first  agony  of  grief, 
no  doubt  that  was  the  metrical  form  in  which  they  were 
written.  A  form  more  perfect  for  elegiac  poetry  could 
not  be  conceived;  but  how  could  it  be  applied  to  an  elabo- 
rate poem  of  many  hundreds  of  lines?  This  Tennyson 
answered  by  dividing  his  poem  into  short  sections,  each 
one  complete  in  itself,  and  expressing  some  particular 
thought  or  sentiment.  It  is  to  this  division  of  the  poem, 
in  part  at  least,  that  much  of  its  popularity  must  be  attrib- 
uted. I  have  already  quoted  the  saying  of  an  acute  critic, 
that  the  reason  why  people  read  "Paradise  Lost"  is  that 
it  is  arranged  in  sections,  and  can  therefore  be  put  down 
and  resumed  at  will.  This  is  eminently  true  of  "In  Me- 
moriam." It  is  a  brilliant  constellation  of  short  poems, 
held  together  in  rhythmic  order  by  one  great  sustaining 


124      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

sentiment.  We  can  open  it  where  we  will,  read  as  much 
as  we  wish,  and  put  it  down  again,  without  any  perplexing 
sense  of  having  missed  the  poet's  meaning  or  destroyed  his 
clue  of  thought.  Of  course  this  is  not  the  student's 
method  of  reading  "In  Memoriam, "  but  it  is  a  method 
often  forced  upon  busy  men  by  the  necessities  of  their 
position;  and  the  fact  that  "In  Memoriam"  is  as  truly  a 
cluster  of  small  poems  as  a  great  poem  in  itself  has  no 
doubt  helped  its  popularity,  and  has  fully  justified  the 
artistic  instinct  which  suggested  its  division  into  sections. 
Another  point  worthy  of  special  remark  is,  that  not 
merely  in  form,  but  in  all  its  coloring,  "In  Memoriam" 
is  a  distinctively  English  poem.  Milton's  noble  elegy  we 
have  already  spoken  of  as  a  fragment  of  the  antique,  and 
its  whole  conception  and  spirit  is  severely  classic.  Shelley 
goes  to  the  same  source  to  find  inspiration  for  his  elegy 
on  Keats.  Save  the  passages  which  directly  touch  on  the 
unhappy  fate  of  Keats,  there  is  nothing  in  the  poem  which 
is  distinctively  English.  Its  allusions  are  classic;  its  sky 
is  the  sky  of  Italy;  its  scenery  has  a  gorgeousness  of  color 
and  a  pomp  unknown  in  the  gray  latitudes  of  the  north. 
Over  the  dead  body  of  Keats,  Shelley  builds  a  glorious 
and  fantastic  tomb — a  sepulcher  of  foreign  splendors,  and 
the  earth  that  holds  him  in  her  bosom  is  a  warmer  and 
more  glorious  earth  than  that  land  of  somber  skies  and 
gray  seas  where  his  genius  was  suffered  to  blossom 
and  decay  unheeded.  Gray,  indeed,  is  English;  Arnold 
is  English,  but  with  the  trace  of  Greek  culture  always  per- 
ceptible; but  Milton  and  Shelley  both  go  boldly  to  the 
classics  for  their  inspiration,  and  have  written  elegies 
which  are  English  in  name  indeed,  but  classical  in  spirit  and 
design.  It  is  the  charm  of  "In  Memoriam"  that  it  is 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  125 

steeped  in  English  thought  and  spirit.  Its  sights  and 
sounds  are  the  familiar  sights  and  sounds  of  rural  life  in 
England.  It  is  England,  and  no  other  land,  that  is  de- 
scribed in  lines  like  these: 

Now  fades  the  last  long  streak  of  snow, 
Now  burgeons  every  maze  of  quick 
About  the  flowery  squares,  and  thick 

By  ashen  roots  the  violets  grow. 

Now  rings  the  woodland  loud  and  long, 
The  distance  takes  a  lovelier  hue, 
And,  drowned  in  yonder  living  blue, 

The  lark  becomes  a  sightless  song. 

Now  dance  the  lights  on  lawn  and  lea, 
The  flocks  are  whiter  down  the  vale, 
And  milkier  every  milky  sail, 

On  winding  stream  or  distant  sea; 

Where  now  the  sea-mew  pipes,  or  dives 
In  yonder  gleaming  green,  and  fly 
The  happy  birds,  that  change  their  sky 

To  build  and  brood. 

All  the  color  of  the  pictures  drawn  from  life  and  nature  is 
English,  and  can  be  mistaken  for  no  other.  It  is  the 
Christmas  eve  we  all  have  known  which  he  thus  describes 

for  us: 

The  time  draws  near  the  birth  of  Christ; 
The  moon  is  hid,  the  night  is  still: 
A  single  church  below  the  hill 
Is  pealing,  folded  in  the  mist. 

It  is  the  English  summer,  whose  mellow  eventides  we  all 
have  rejoiced  in,  when  "returning  from  afar," 

And  brushing  ankle-deep  in  flowers, 
We  heard  behind  the  woodbine  veil 
The  milk  that  bubbled  in  the  pail, 

And  buzzings  of  the  honeyed  hours. 


126      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Nowhere  in  Tennyson's  works  will  there  be  found 
more  perfect  pictures  of  English  scenery  and  seasons  exe- 
cuted with  more  artistic  delicacy  and  skill  than  in  "In 
Memoriam."  They  are  all  exquisitely  finished,  with 
something  of  the  labored  patience  of  pictures  on  ivory  or 
porcelain,  and  each  is  perfect  in  its  way.  The  effects  are 
often  gained  in  single  phrases,  so  happy,  so  luminous,  so 
exact,  that  we  feel  it  is  impossible  to  surpass  them.  This, 
at  least,  is  one  of  the  qualities  which  have  made  "In 
Memoriam"  famous.  It  is  not  merely  a  noble  threnody 
upon  a  dead  Englishman,  but  it  is  one  of  the  most  dis- 
tinctively English  poems  in  the  language,  expressing  uni- 
versal sentiments  indeed,  but  with  a  perpetual  reference  to 
national  scenery,  customs,  and  life. 

One  other  point  should  not  be  overlooked  in  estimating 
such  a  poem  as  "In  Memoriam."  To  its  many  other 
great  qualities,  it  adds  one  of  the  rarest  of  all — it  is  the 
most  perfect  expression  we  have  of  the  spirit  of  the  age. 
It  is  a  poem  of  the  century;  indeed,  we  may  say,  the 
poem  of  the  century.  It  sums  up  as  no  other  work  of  our 
time  has  done  the  characteristic  intellectual  and  religious 
movements  of  the  Victorian  epoch.  Nowhere  has  Tenny- 
son borrowed  so  largely  from  modern  science  as  here. 
The  well-known  lines, 

Break  thou  deep  vase  of  chilling  tears 
That  grief  hath  shaken  into  frost, 

afford  an  excellent  specimen  of  these  obligations;  the 
metaphor  is  very  beautiful,  but  it  cannot  be  understood 
without  a  knowledge  of  elementary  chemistry.  At  first 
this  was  esteemed  a  startling  innovation,  and  was  used 
against  him  as  a  reproach,  but  if  the  great  poet  is  he  who 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  127 

concentrates  in  his  poetry  the  spirit  of  his  time,  Tennyson 
was  bound  to  take  account  of  the  scientific  tendency, 
which  is  one  of  the  most  marked  features  of  the  century. 
But  he  has  done  more  than  this.  He  has  stated,  not 
merely  scientific  arguments  and  facts,  but  also  the  religious 
doubts,  the  perplexities,  the  philosophic  difficulties  of  the 
day,  with  equal  skill  and  force.  He  has  perceived  the 
intellectual  and  religious  drift  of  his  age  with  unerring 
accuracy.  He  himself  has  passed  through  its  various 
stages  of  doubtful  illumination,  of  dark  misgiving,  of 
agonizing  search  for  light,  and  lastly  of  clear  and  even 
triumphant  faith.  Like  another  poet  of  our  time,  Arthur 
Hugh  Clough,  Tennyson  has  known  what  it  is 

To  finger  idly  some  old  Gordian  knot, 
Unskilled  to  sunder  and  too  weak  to  cleave, 
And  with  much  toil  attain  to  half-believe. 

But  he  has  done  what  Clough  could  not  do,  he  has  cut  the 
Gordian  knot,  and  found  "a  surer  faith  his  own."  The 
process  by  which  he  has  attained  this  victory  we  shall  see 
in  the  analysis  of  "In  Memoriam."  In  the  mean  time,  it 
is  sufficient  to  observe  that  the  hold  which  this  poem  has 
taken  on  the  minds  of  men  must  be  attributed  not  only  to 
its  literary  genius,  but  to  its  prophetic  qualities.  Not 
merely  is  it  original  in  metrical  design,  and  thoroughly 
English  in  color,  but  it  is  also  an  interpretation  of  the 
deepest  religious  yearnings  and  philosophic  problems  of 
our  time,  and  as  such  has  become  the  indispensable  com- 
panion of  all  who  share,  and  seek  to  understand  or  to 
direct,  the  intellectual  life  of  the  century. 

A  great  poem  should  interpret  itself,  and,  in  the  larger 
sense,  "In  Memoriam"  needs  no  comment  or  elucidation. 
But  there  is  another  sense  in  which  elucidation  is  needed 


128      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

and  cannot  but  be  useful.  Because  the  "In  Memoriam" 
is,  as  we  have  seen,  not  merely  a  great  poem  in  itself,  but 
really  a  series  of  short  poems  held  together  by  a  common 
sentiment,  it  is  not  always  easy  to  perceive  the  thread  of 
thought  that  binds  each  to  each.  The  transitions  of 
thought  and  theme  are  always  subtle,  and  often  sudden. 
The  various  suggestions  of  loss  crowd  thickly  on  the  mind 
of  the  poet,  and  it  is  sometimes  difficult  to  perceive  the 
link  which  connects  them  into  an  organic  whole.  It  may 
be  well,  therefore,  to  attempt,  not  an  elaborate  analysis, 
for  that  has  been  ably  done  by  others,  but  a  sort  of  indi- 
catory comment  whereby  we  may  perceive  the  course  and 
current  of  the  poem. 

The  opening  poem  of  the  series  is  an  after-thought, 
and  sums  up  much  that  is  said  hereafter  in  detail.  It  is 
a  final  confession  of  religious  faith,  "believing  where  we 
cannot  prove, ' '  in  which  Tennyson  craves  forgiveness  for 
"the  wild  and  wandering  cries"  of  the  poem,  which  he 
terms  "confusions  of  a  wasted  youth."  The  poem  proper 
then  begins.  From  i.  to  v.  we  have  a  statement  of  those 
common  states  of  mind  which  attend  all  great  bereave- 
ments. There  is  a  sacredness  in  loss  (v.)  which  almost 
makes  it  a  sacrilege  to  embalm  the  sorrow  of  the  heart  in 
words,  and  yet  there  is  a  use  in  measured  language,  for  at 
least  the  labor  of  literary  production  numbs  the  pain. 
Then  follows  (vi.)  a  beautiful  and  pathetic  vision  of  what 
loss  means  to  others  besides  himself.  Such  a  sorrow  as 
his  is  not  peculiar:  at  the  moment  while  the  father  pledges 
his  gallant  son,  he  is  shot  upon  the  battle-field,  and  while 
the  mother  prays  for  her  sailor-lad,  his 

Heavy-shotted  hammock-shroud 
Drops  in  his  vast  and  wandering  grave. 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  129 

Memory  wakens  (vii.-viii.),  and  then  Fancy  (ix.-x.);  the 
one  recalling  ended  joys  of  fellowship,  the  other  picturing 
the  ship  that  bears  homeward  the  dead  body  of  his  friend; 
and  fancy  suggests  that  it  at  least  is  something  to  be 
spared  an  ocean  burial,  and  to  sleep  in  English  earth,  that 

From  his  ashes  may  be  made 

The  violet  of  his  native  land.  (xviii.) 

Nature  is  calm  (xi.),  but  if  the  poet  has  any  calm  it  is  a 
calm  despair.  Yet  while  he  pictures  the  processes  of 
death,  he  marks  it  as  curious  that  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  believe  his  friend  is  dead.  If  again  they  struck  hand  in 
hand,  he  would  not  feel  it  strange  (xiv.),  for  death  seems 
unimaginable.  Then  again  the  light  fades,  and  he  pic- 
tures the  final  obsequies  and  place  of  rest  (xix.).  Pain 
may  be  meant  to  produce  in  him  the  firmer  mind  (xviii.). 
Perhaps  some  will  say  that  this  brooding  over  grief  is 
unmanly,  the  pastime  of  the  egotist,  the  vain  torture  of  a 
morbid  mind;  to  which  he  can  only  reply  they  know 
neither  him  nor  his  friend. 

I  do  but  sing  because  1  must, 

And  pipe  but  as  the  linnets  sing.  (xxi.) 

Again  he  recalls  lost  days,  and  how  on  the  "fifth  autum- 
nal slope"  of  those  brief  ended  years,  Death  met  and 
parted  them  (xxii.).  Let  those  mock  who  will.  He  has 
no  envy  of  those  more  callous  of  heart  than  he,  who  have 
never  known  the  joy  of  a  perfect  love  and  therefore 
cannot  understand  what  its  loss  may  mean.  A  man's 
capacity  of  agony  is  his  capacity  of  rapture: 

I  hold  it  true,  whate'er  befall, 

I  feel  it,  when  I  sorrow  most; 

Tis  better  to  have  loved  and  lost 
Than  never  to  have  loved  at  all.  (xxvii.) 


130     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

The  time  of  happy  family  gatherings  draws  near,  and 

Christmas  bells  from  hill  to  hill 
Answer  each  other  in  the  mist. 

To  him  it  is  a  sad  time  of  forced  mirth  and  empty  joy. 
But  there  is  something  in  the  very  season  that  suggests 
nobler  thoughts: 

Our  voices  took  a  higher  range; 

Once  more  we  sang:  "They  do  not  die 

Nor  lose  their  mortal  sympathy, 
Nor  change  to  us,  although  they  change."      (xxx.) 

That,  at  least,  is  the  promise  of  faith,  and  with  a  cry  to 
the  Divine  Father,  who  lit  <'the  light  that  shone  when  Hope 
was  born,"  the  first  great  halting-place  in  the  poem  is 
reached. 

In  the  next  section  of  the  poem  (xxxi.)  a  new  line  of 
thought  begins  with  the  touching  picture  of  Lazarus  re- 
deemed from  the  grave's  dishonors,  and  seated  once  more 
among  the  familiar  faces  of  Bethany.  During  those  four 
days  of  sojourn  in  the  realm  of  death,  did  Lazarus  yearn 
for  human  love,  or  miss  it?  Did  he  retain  a  conscious 
identity,  and  know  where  and  what  he  was?  If  he  had 
willed,  surely  he  could  have  solved  all  the  deep  mystery  of 
death  for  us.  But  if  such  questions  were  proposed  to  him, 
"there  lives  no  record  of  reply,"  or  if  he  answered  them, 
"something  sealed  the  lips  of  that  evangelist,"  and  the 
world  will  never  know  the  secrets  of  the  prison-house. 
At  this  point  Tennyson  begins  to  state  and  combat  the 
doubts  that  perplex  him.  Yet  he  half  hesitates  to  do  so. 
Simple  faith  is  so  beautiful  and  rare,  that  he  may  well  ask 
himself  what  right  he  has  to  disturb  its  serenity  with  his 
uneasy  questionings.  Let  any  who,  after  toil  and  storm, 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  131 

think  that  they  have  reached  a  higher  freedom  of  truth, 
be  careful  how  they  disturb  the  faith  of  simple  souls,  who 
have  nothing  but  their  faith  to  sustain  them,  and  whose 
"hands  are  quicker  unto  good"  than  ours  (xxxii.).  Yet 
we  cannot  help  asking,  "Is  man  immortal?"  If  he  is 
not,  then 

Earth  is  darkness  at  the  core, 

And  dust  and  ashes  all  that  is. 

The  thought  of  God  is  lost,  and  the  best  fate  were  to  drop 

Head-foremost  in  the  jaws 
Of  vacant  darkness  and  to  cease.          (xxxiv.) 

In  the  hour  of  such  awful  questionings  the  heart  instinc- 
tively turns  to  Christ,  who  wrought 

With  human  hands  the  creed  of  creeds, 
In  loveliness  of  perfect  deeds 
More  strong  than  all  poetic  thought.  (xxxvi.) 

Doubt  and  hope  now  alternate  like  shadow  and  light  in  the 
poet's  mind.  When  he  sees  the  sun  sink  on  the  wide 
moor,  a  spectral  doubt  makes  him  cold  with  the  sugges- 
tion that  so  his  friend's  life  has  sunk  out  of  sight,  and  he 
will  see  his  "mate  no  more"  (xli.).  Perhaps  his  friend  is 
as  the  maiden  who  has  entered  on  the  new  toils  of  wedded 
days,  and  is  content  to  forsake  the  home  of  childhood: 
yet  even  she  returns  sometimes  to 

Bring  her  babe,  and  make  her  boast, 
Till  even  those  who  missed  her  most 
Shall  count  new  things  as  dear  as  old.  (xl.) 

"How  fares  it  with  the  happy  dead?"  (xliv.)  May 
not  death  be  in  itself  a  new  birth,  the  entrance  upon  fuller 
life?  (xlv.)  Only  it  were  hard  to  accept  the  suggestion 


132      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

literally,  for  that  would  mean  forgetfulness  of  that  which 
preceded  the  entrance  on  eternal  life.  "In  that  deep 
dawn  behind  the  tomb"  will  not  "the  eternal  landscape  of 
the  past"  be  clear  "from  marge  to  marge"?  (xlvi.)  With 
those  who  speak  of  death  as  reabsorption  into  the  univer- 
sal soul  he  has  no  sympathy.  It  is  "faith  as  vague  as  all 
unsweet";  it  means  destruction  of  identity,  and  his  hope 
about  his  dead  friend  is  that  he 

Shall  know  him  when  we  meet, 
And  we  shall  sit  in  endless  feast, 
Enjoying  each  the  other's  good.  (xlvii.) 

With  the  glow  of  that  thought  burning  in  him  he  calls 
upon  the  dead  ever  to  be  near  him — when  the  light  is  low, 
when  the  heart  is  sick,  when  the  pangs  of  pain  conquer 
trust,  when  the  folly  and  emptiness  of  human  life  appal 
him  and  finally,  when  he  fades  away  on  that  low  dark 
verge  of  life  which  is 

The  twilight  of  eternal  day.  (1.) 

Yet  even  this  wish  he  is  keen  to  question  a  moment  later; 
do  we  really  desire  our  dead  to  be  near  us  in  spirit,  and  is 
there  no  baseness  we  would  hide  from  their  purged  and 
piercing  vision?  (li.)  In  fact,  his  soul  has  become  so  sick 
with  sorrow  that  he  now  only  suggests  hopes  to  himself, 
that  he  may  fight  against  them.  He  philosophizes  on  his 
own  errors  of  conduct,  but  rebukes  his  conclusions  with 
the  fear  that  he  may  push  Philosophy  beyond  her  mark, 
and  make  her  "Procuress  to  the  lords  of  hell!"  (liv.)  Yet 
in  the  moment  of  the  uttermost  darkness,  full  of  distemper 
and  despair,  he  breaks  forth  into  one  of  the  noblest  con- 
fessions of  faith, 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  133 

That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet, 
That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroyed, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 

When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete.         (liv.) 

It  is  true  that  Nature  teaches  no  such  doctrine;  she  is 
careless  of  the  single  type,  and  cries, 

A  thousand  types  are  gone; 

I  care  for  nothing,  all  shall  go.  (Iv.-vi.) 

Yet  will  he  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  "faintly  trust 
the  larger  hope."  Nay,  it  seems  a  sin  against  the  dead 
to  doubt  that  it  is  forever  and  forever  well  with  them 
(Ivii.).  The  lost  Arthur  is  in  a  "second  state  sublime"; 
and  he  has  carried  human  love  with  him  there.  Will  he 
still  love  his  friend  on  earth?  (Ixi.)  Will  he  not  still  love 
the  earth  and  earthly  ways?  It  is  a  question  Emily  Bronte 
answered  in  her  daring  picture  of  a  spirit  in  heaven  sighing 
unceasingly  for  the  purple  moors  she  loved  below,  until 
the  angels  in  anger  cast  her  out,  and  she  wakes,  sobbing 
for  joy,  on  the  wild  heather,  with  a  skylark  singing  over 
her.  Tennyson  pictures  the  great  statesman  who  still 
yearns  for  the  village  green  of  childhood,  and  consoles 
himself  that  love  cannot  be  lost : 

Since  we  deserved  the  name  of  friends, 

And  thine  effect  so  lives  in  me, 

A  part  of  mine  may  live  in  thee, 
And  move  thee  on  to  nobler  deeds.  (Ixiv.-v.) 

He  dreamed  there  would  be  spring  no  more,  but  now  he 
perceives  that  his  life  begins  to  quicken  again  (Ixix.). 

So  many  worlds,  so  much  to  do, 

So  little  done,  such  things  to  be,  (Ixxiii.) 

is  his  reflection  on  the  premature  ending  of  his  friend's 
life,  but  it  also  marks  an  awakening  of  purpose  in  his  own. 


134     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Here  again,  upon  the  verge  of  another  Christmas,  the 
poem  seems  to  pause  with  the  personal  reflections  of  the 
seventy-seventh  section,  on  the  possibility  that  what  he 
has  written  of  his  friend  may  never  find  readers,  nor  touch 
any  heart  but  his  own.  There  is  a  virility  and  spirit  in 
this  section  which  marks  the  movement  of  a  healthier 
mind.  That  he  can  begin  to  think  about  the  publication 
of  his  own  verses  is  significant  of  the  rekindling  of  human 
ambition  in  him,  and  is  the  token  that  the  lethargy  of  grief 
is  broken.  He  has  not  recovered  his  strength  yet;  but 
the  crisis  of  the  disease  is  over. 

From  this  point  the  poem  moves  in  a  clearer  and  less 
grief-laden  atmosphere;  the  assurance  of  faith  becomes 
stronger,  and  a  note  of  triumph  breathes  in  the  music, 
gradually  heightening  and  deepening  to  its  majestic  close. 
He  can  bear  now  to  pass  in  review  the  lost  possibilities  of 
earthly  felicity  which  were  in  his  friend  (Ixxxiv.),  because 
he  has  learned  to  believe  that  a  diviner  felicity  is  his.  He 
holds  sacred  "commune  with  the  dead,"  and  asks, 

How  is  it?     Canst  thou  feel  for  me 

Some  painless  sympathy  with  pain?          (Ixxxv.) 

He  gives  us  a  portrait  of  his  friend;  he  pictures  him  eager 
in  debate,  a  master  bowman  cleaving  the  center  of  the 
profoundest  thought,  quick  and  impassioned  in  oratory, 

And  over  those  ethereal  eyes 

The  bar  of  Michael  Angelo;  (Ixxxvii.) 

that  is,  the  deep  furrow  between  the  eyebrows,*  which 
was  indicative  of  individuality  in  the  great  Italian  artist. 
He  recollects  how  he  left  "the  dusty  purlieus  of  the  law," 

*  This  is  a  disputed  point.  According  to  Dr.  Gatty  the  reference  is  the 
straightness  and  prominence  of  Hallam's  forehead,  in  which  it  resembled 
Michael  Angelo's. 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  135 

and  joined  in  simple  rural  sports  with  boyish  glee  (Ixxxix. ) ; 
and  how  they  talked  together,  and  in  prolonged  and  eager 

converse 

Discussed  the  books  to  love  or  hate, 
Or  touched  the  changes  of  the  state, 
Or  threaded  some  Socratic  dream. 

This  portraiture  of  Arthur  Hallam  is  completed  later  on, 
in  the  striking  stanza  of  the  hundred  and  eleventh  section, 
when  Tennyson  exclaims: 

And  thus  he  bore  without  abuse 
The  grand  old  name  of  gentleman, 
Defamed  by  every  charlatan, 

And  soiled  with  all  ignoble  use. 

Again  he  implores  his  presence,  and  he  will  have  no  fear; 
for  whereas  he  once  thought  of  him  as  lost  forever,  now 
he  feels  his  presence,  "Spirit  to  Spirit,  Ghost  to  Ghost," 
and  actually  believes  that  in  dream  or  vision  his  friend 
does  visit  him — 

So  word  by  word,  and  line  by  line, 
The  dead  man  touched  me  from  the  past, 
And  all  at  once  it  seemed  at  last 

The  living  soul  was  flashed  on  mine.  (xci.-v.) 

It  is  mind  breathing  on  mind  from  the  past ;  he  feels  that 
whatever  is  lost,  that  survives,  and  is-  with  him  alway. 
It  is  true  that  his  friend  has  doubted,  but  it  was  honest 
doubt,  which  he  defends  in  the  famous  lines: 

There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 

Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds.  (xcvi.) 

He  draws  a  lovely  picture  of  a  wife  who  lives  with  a  hus- 
band whose  intellectual  life  is  beyond  her  apprehension, 
but  who  can  say  at  least,  as  he  has  learned  to  say,  "I 


136     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

cannot  understand;  I  love"  (xcvii.).  It  is  the  only  out- 
come from  bewilderment;  he  will  follow,  not  the  reason, 
but  the  heart;  a  truth  stated  with  yet  greater  force  and 
fullness  in  section  cxxiv. : 

If  e'er  when  faith  had  fallen  asleep, 
I  heard  a  voice,  "  Believe  no  more," 

A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 

The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 

And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 
Stood  up,  and  answered,  "  I  have  felt." 

He  recalls  how  he  and  his  friend  traveled  together  in 
unforgotten  summer  days,  and  that  leads  to  a  series  of 
those  beautiful  cabinet  pictures  of  scenery  which  lend  so 
great  a  charm  to  the  poem  (xcviii.-ci.).  He  relates  how 
he  has  dreamed,  and  saw  in  dreams  the  glory  of  his  friend; 
how  "thrice  as  large  as  man  he  bent  to  greet  us" — a 
symbol  of  the  larger  manhood  which  he  has  inherited;  and 
how  he  stood  upon  the  deck  of  some  great  ship  with  shin- 
ing sides,  that  sailed  o'er  floods  of  "grander  space"  than 
any  earthly — a  pathetic  reference  to  the  ship  that  bore  his 
dead  body  home  to  England,  and  again  a  symbol  of  that 
voyage  of  life  on  which  his  spirit  now  passes  through  an 
ever-broadening  glory  (ciii.).  Then  again  the  Christmas 
comes:  charged  still  with  too  great  memories  of  sorrow  to 
allow  the  dance  and  wassail-song,  but  yet  bringing  a  genial 
change  in  him,  for  he  has  abandoned  wayward  grief,  and 
"broke  the  bond  of  dying  use"  (cv.).  This  Christmas  is 
spent  in  "the  stranger's  land,"  away  from  home,  and  the 
bells  are  not  the  bells  he  knows.  The  Christmas  bells 
peal  "folded  in  the  mist"  as  before;  but  when  the  New 
Year  is  near  its  dawning  there  is  a  new  music  in  the  bells, 
a  hope  and  triumph  in  their  chime,  which  sets  his  heart 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  137 

vibrating  with  a  new  and  wholesome  vigor,  and  he  breaks 
out  into  that  memorable  apostrophe: 

Ring  out,  wild  bells,  to  the  wild  sky, 
The  flying  cloud,  the  frosty  light, 
The  year  is  dying  in  the  night. 

Ring  out,  wild  bells,  and  let  him  die.  (cvi.) 

The  happy  clangor  of  the  New  Year  bells  celebrates 
his  final  emancipation  from  the  perplexities  of  doubt,  his 
final  recovery  of  healthful  life,  the  sanctification  of  his 
sorrow,  the  triumph  of  his  faith.  It  is  the  anniversary  of 
Arthur  Hallam's  birth,  the  bitter  February  weather,  which 
"admits  not  flowers  or  leaves  to  deck  the  banquet,"  yet 
the  day  shall  be  kept  with  festal  cheer — 

With  books  and  music;  surely  we 
Will  drink  to  him,  whate'er  he  be, 
And  sing  the  songs  he  loved  to  hear.  (cvii.) 

He  has  soared  into  the  mystic  heights  of  perplexed  specu- 
lation, only  to  find  his  "own  phantom  singing  hymns"; 
henceforth,  he  says: 

I  will  not  shut  me  from  my  kind; 

And  lest  1  stiffen  into  stone, 

I  will  not  eat  my  heart  alone, 
Nor  feed  with  sighs  a  passing  wind.  (cviii.) 

Science,  which  teaches  him  how  the  world  and  human 
life  have  grown  out  of  the  fierce  shocks  of  age-long  dis- 
cipline, the  cleansing  fire  and  cyclic  storm,  may  also  teach 
him  that  sorrow  is  to  man  a  sacred  discipline,  and  that 
fear,  and  weeping,  and  the  shocks  of  doom  do  but  batter 
him  to  shape  and  use  (cxviii.).  Natural  science  can  tell  us 
much,  but  not  all;  we  are  not  "magnetic  mockeries,"  nor 
"cunning  casts  in  clay."  There  is  a  spiritual  science  also 
which  the  wise  man  seeks  to  learn,  and  which  unfolds  a 


138      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

truer  map  of  the  mysterious  nature  of  man  (cxx.).  It  is 
the  reality  of  spiritual  existence  that  his  sorrow  has  re- 
vealed to  him.  Love  is  immortality,  and  through  his  love 
he  has  already  entered  on  eternal  life.  The  knowledge 
that  his  lost  friend  is  really  alive  for  evermore ;  that  death 
for  him  has  been  simply  emancipation  and  enfranchisement; 
that  all  which  he  loved  in  him  not  merely  survives,  but  is 
perfected  in  excellence,  freed  from  all  human  blemish  or 
limitation — this  fills  him  with  an  almost  ecstatic  joy.  In 
the  early  morning,  when  the  city  is  asleep,  he  again  stands 
before  those  dark  doors  in  Wimpole  Street,  but  it  is  no 
longer  with  agonized  upbraidings  of  fate.  The  calmness 
and  hope  of  morning  are  with  him,  as  they  were  with  that 
forlorn  woman  who  long  since  sought  her  Master,  when  it 
was  yet  early,  in  an  Eastern  garden,  and  found,  not  a 
corpse  within  the  tomb,  but  a  shining  Figure  walking  in 
the  dewy  freshness  of  the  day,  and  he  says: 

And  in  my  thoughts,  with  scarce  a  sigh, 

I  take  the  pressure  of  thy  hand.  (cxix.) 

It  is  more  than  resignation,  it  is  more  than  hope.  It  is 
the  voice  of  living  certainty,  of  an  entire  and  undivided 
triumph,  which  lifts  itself  above  the  dark  confusions  of 
the  past  and  sings — 

Far  off  thou  art,  but  ever  nigh, 
I  have  thee  still  and  I  rejoice; 
I  prosper,  circled  with  thy  voice, 
I  shall  not  lose  thee  tho'  I  die.  (cxxx.) 

The  long  anguish  has  done  its  work  in  the  purification  of 
the  soul  and  the  strengthening  of  the  faith;  all  the  bitter 
sounds  of  wailing  and  distress  die  away,  and  it  is  with  a 
perfect  hallelujah  chorus  of  glory  in  the  highest,  and 
peace  upon  earth,  that  the  poem  ends. 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  139 

There  is,  however,  annexed  to  it  one  other  section,  and 
not  the  least  lovely — the  epithalamium  on  his  sister's  mar- 
riage. We  learn  that  this  marriage  took  place  "some 
thrice  three  years"  after  Arthur  Hallam's  death,  but 
whether  the  bride  was  the  sister  Hallam  hoped  to  marry 
we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  This  epithalamium  is  one 
of  those  happy  after-touches  in  which  Tennyson  displays 
so  perfectly  his  artistic  skill.  It  is  suggestive  of  how  life 
goes  on,  and  must  go  on,  in  spite  of  the  gaps  made  in  our 
ranks  by  death;  and  "the  clash  and  clang"  of  the  wed- 
ding bells,  carried  on  the  warm  breeze,  is  a  noble  contrast 
to  that  mournful  pealing  of  bells  through  the  mist  which 
is  heard  so  often  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  poem.  The 
winter  is  over  and  gone,  the  time  of  the  singing  of  birds 
is  come,  and  the  voice  of  the  turtle  is  heard  in  the  land. 
And»now,  whether  life  bring  joy  or  sorrow,  funeral  chimes 
or  marriage  bells,  the  poet  has  an  all-sustaining  and  puri- 
fying faith  in  God — 

That  God,  which  ever  lives  and  loves, 

One  God,  one  law,  one  element, 

And  one  far-off  divine  event, 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 

That  "one  far-off  divine  event"  can  be  no  other  than  the 
perfecting  of  love  in  human  life,  the  complete  recognition 
by  every  living  soul  of  the  love  of  God,  and  the  final  vin- 
dication of  that  perfect  divine  love  in  all  its  varied  deal- 
ings with  men,  in  things  past,  in  things  present,  and  in 
things  that  are  to  come.  This  is  the  vaguely  sketched 
yet  noble  vision,  which  crowns  with  spiritual  glory  the 
completion  of  his  thought  and  labor.  He  has  led  us  through 
the  darkest  valleys  of  Apollyon,  but  we  reach  with  him  the 
Beulah  land  at  last.  We  hear  the  trumpets  pealing  on 


140      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

the  other  side,  and  behold  it  is  morning!  Fair  and  sweet 
the  light  shines,  and  heavenly  voices  tell  us  we  shall  walk 
in  night  no  more.  It  is  morning — the  morning  of  a  deep 
and  clear-eyed  faith;  and  doubt  and  sorrow,  fear  and 
pain,  are  past  forever.  They  are  not  forgotten  indeed; 
but  we  see  them  now  only  as  distant  clouds  touched  with 
glories  of  celestial  color,  lying  far  and  faint  behind  us  on 
the  radiant  horizon,  transfigured  and  transformed  by  the 
alchemy  of  God.  The  phantoms  of  the  night  are  slain, 
the  anguish  of  the  night  is  ended;  the  true  light  shineth 
with  healing  in  its  wings,  and  the  soul  rejoices.  It  may 
well  rejoice  with  joy  unspeakable,  for 

Out  of  the  shadow  of  night 
The  world  rolls  into  light, 
It  is  daybreak  everywhere. 

We  here  conclude  our  study  of  Tennyson.  What  his 
ultimate  position  in  the  ranks  of  fame  may  be  it  is  impos- 
sible to  decide.  We  are  yet  too  fully  under  his  immediate 
influence  for  our  discernment  to  be  just  or  our  judgment 
to  be  wise.  That  he  is  among  the  few  great  creative 
poets  of  humanity  no  one  will  assert;  that  he  is  never- 
theless a  poet  of  great  and  varied  excellence  none  will 
deny.  He  has  been  compared  with  Milton,  and  has  been 
set  so  high  above  Wordsworth  that  one  of  his  critics  has 
ventured  to  say  that  in  the  future,  when  men  call  the  roll 
of  poets,  "they  will  begin  with  Shakespeare  and  Milton — 
and  who  shall  have  the  third  place  if  it  be  not  Tennyson?" 
But  Emerson,  whose  judgment  is  worthy  of  general  defer- 
ence, has  said  that  Wordsworth  is  the  poet  of  modern 
England,  and  that  "other  writers  have  to  affect  what  to 
him  is  natural."  And  that  pregnant  saying  illumines  at 


Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  141 

once  the  whole  question,  laying  bare  at  one  stroke  the 
secret  of  Wodsworth's  supremacy  and  of  Tennyson's 
deficiency.  We  cannot  but  feel  that  he  lacks  the  massive 
ease  of  Wordsworth  and  the  deep  interior  strength  of 
Milton.  If  we  still  hesitate  to  grant  him  equality  with  the 
foremost  poets  of  his  own  century,  it  is  for  the  sound 
reason  that  while  in  Tennyson  artistic  culture  has  never 
been  surpassed,  yet  the  original  poetic  impulse  is  weaker 
in  him  than  in  either  of  these  great  poets.  But  happily 
it  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  determine  the  rank,  before  we 
can  discern  the  genius,  of  our  masters;  it  is  enough  for  us 
to  receive  with  thankfulness  and  admiration  the  writings 
of  a  great  poet,  who  for  sixty  years  has  fed  the  mind  of 
England  with  visions  of  truth  and  beauty,  and  who, 
through  all  that  length  of  various  years,  has  never  ceased 
to  be  a  source  of  inspiration  and  delight  to  that  diffused 
and  dominant  race  who 

Speak  the  tongue  that  Shakespeare  spake. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  experience  in  Tennyson's  life  led  to  the  writing 
of  "  In  Memoriam  "? 

2.  How  is  it  probable  that  the  idea  of  the  poem  developed 
in  Tennyson's  mind? 

3.  Compare   the   famous  elegiac  poems  which  have  ap- 
peared in  English  literature? 

4.  What  external  qualities  of  "  In  Memoriam  "  have  helped 
its  popularity? 

5.  Give  illustrations  of  some  peculiarly  English  character- 
istics of  the  poem. 

6.  How  does  it  reflect  the  spirit  of  the  nineteenth  century? 

7.  Show  how  the  thought  of  the   poem  develops  up   to 
Section  xxxi. 


142     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

8.  Show  the  changes  in  the  quality  of  the  poet's  thought 
in  the  next  section. 

9.  How  does  the  poem  proceed  to  a  triumphant  conclusion ? 

10.  Describe  the  epithalamium. 

11.  What  comparisons  have  been  made  between  Tenny- 
son and  the  other  great  poets  of  the  century? 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Tennyson :  His  A  rt  and  Relation  to  Modern  Life.  Stopf  ord 
A.  Brooke. 

The  Poetry  of  Tennyson.     Henry  Van  Dyke. 

Tennyson's  In  Memoriam,  Its  Purpose  and  Its  Structure. 
John  F.  Genung. 

Records  of  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  and  Browning.  Anne  Thack- 
eray Ritchie. 

The  Victorian  Poets.    Edmund  Clarence  Stedman. 

Poets  and  Problems.    George  Willis  Cooke. 

Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mill  and  Other  Literary  Estimates. 
Frederic  Harrison. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
ROBERT  BROWNING 

[Born  at  Camberwell,  London,  May  7,  1812.  "  Pauline"  pub- 
lished 1832.  Married  Elizabeth  Barrett  September  12, 
1846.  "The  Ring  and  the  Book  "  published  1868.  "Aso- 
lando,"  his  last  volume,  1889.  Died  in  Venice,  December 
12,  1889.  Buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  December  31, 
i! 


The  two  greatest  figures  in  the  world  of  modern  poetry 
are  Tennyson  and  Browning.  To  each  has  been  accorded 
old  age;  both  have  been  keenly  alive  to  the  intellectual 
and  social  movements  of  their  time,  and  have  endeavored 
to  reflect  them.  Each  also  has  been  an  observant  student 
of  life,  as  all  true  poets  must  be,  and  each  has  constructed 
a  huge  gallery  of  human  portraits,  representing  many 
types,  and  arranged  with  artistic  instinct  and  consummate 
skill.  But  while  Tennyson  has  proved  himself  the  greater 
artist,  Browning  has  proved  himself  the  greater  mind. 
He  has  brought  to  the  work  of  the  poet  a  keen  and  subtle 
intellect,  a  penetrating  insight,  the  experience  of  a  citizen 
of  the  world,  and  in  all  things  the  original  force  of  a 
powerful  individuality.  The  result  of  his  artistic  deficiency 
is,  that  he  has  entirely  failed  to  obtain  popularity.  He  has 
not  known  how  to  deliver  his  message  to  the  popular  ear, 
and  it  may  be  doubted  if  he  has  ever  cared  to  try.  With 
a  touch  of  justifiable  scorn,  he  has  declared  that  he  never 
intended  his  poetry  to  be  a  substitute  for  a  cigar  or  a  game 

H3 


144      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

of  dominoes  to  an  idle  man.  The  grace  and  music  of 
Tennyson's  verse  have  compelled  delight,  but  in  Browning 
there  is  no  attempt  at  verbal  music.  It  is  with  him  an 
unstudied,  perhaps  an  uncoveted,  art.  When  David 
sought  to  express  the  consummate  union  of  the  opposite 
qualities  which  constitute  perfection,  he  said,  "Strength 
and  beauty  are  in  His  sanctuary."  In  Browning  we  have 
the  strength,  in  Tennyson  the  beauty.  And  the  result  of 
this  artistic  deficiency,  this  inability  to  clothe  his  thoughts 
in  forms  of  grace,  is,  that  Browning  has  failed  in  any  large 
degree  to  charm  the  ear  of  that  wide  public  who  care  less 
for  the  thought  that  is  uttered  than  for  the  manner  of  its 
utterance. 

It  is,  however,  necessary  to  remember  another  fact 
about  Browning's  poetry;  viz.,  that  to  the  first  minds  of 
the  age,  the  men  who  lead  and  govern  the  world  of 
thought,  Browning  has  been  and  is  a  potent  and  inspiring 
force.  He  has  disseminated  ideas,  he  has  pervaded  the 
literature  of  his  time  with  his  influence.  He  has  found 
an  audience,  few  but  fitting,  and  to  them  has  addressed 
himself,  knowing  that  through  them  he  could  effectually 
reach  the  world  at  large.  The  test  of  popularity  is  at  all 
times  an  imperfect  test,  and  in  Browning's  case  is  wholly 
inadequate  and  unsatisfactory  as  an  index  of  his  true  posi- 
tion in  the  literature  of  his  day.  The  influence  of  a  poet 
is  often  out  of  all  proportion  to  his  popularity,  and  is  by 
no  means  to  be  measured  by  the  number  of  his  readers, 
or  the  poverty  or  copiousness  of  public  praise.  If  mere 
popularity  were  to  become  the  solitary  test  of  influence, 
we  should  have  to  rank  Longfellow  above  Dante,  and 
Martin  Tupper  above  Tennyson.  But  while  popularity  is 
in  itself  a  testimony  to  the  possession  of  certain  service- 


Robert  Browning  145 

able  qualities,  or  a  certain  happy  combination  of  qualities, 
it  fails  wholly  as  a  just  measurement  of  the  real  formative 
force  which  a  writer  may  be  able  to  exercise  upon  his 
time,  and  still  more  hopelessly  as  an  indication  of  the  posi- 
tion such  a  writer  may  take  up  in  the  unknown  judgments 
of  posterity.  A  man  may  catch  the  ear  of  the  public, 
and  win  its  empty  plaudits,  without  touching  in  more  than 
an  infinitesimal  degree  the  public  conscience  or  the  public 
thought. 

The  deeper  and  diviner  waves  of  intellectual  life  indeed 
have  more  often  than  not  owed  their  origin  to  men  who 
have  quarreled  with  their  age,  and  received  from  their 
contemporaries  little  but  the  thorn-crown  of  derision  and 
the  sponge  of  gall  and  vinegar — men  wandering  in  the 
bitterness  of  exile  like  Dante,  or  starving  in  the  scholar's 
garret  like  Spinoza.  Most  truly  great  writers,  to  whom 
has  been  committed  the  creative  genius  which  opens  new 
wells  of  thought  and  new  methods  of  utterance,  have  had 
need  to  steel  themselves  against  the  indifference  of  their 
time,  and  to  learn  how  to  say:  "None  of  these  things 
move  me."  They  have  appealed  from  the  contemptuous 
ignorance  of  their  contemporaries  to  the  certain  praises  of 
posterity,  and  not  in  vain.  Where  such  men  find  readers 
they  make  disciples,  and  each  heart  upon  which  the  fire 
of  their  genius  falls  becomes  consecrated  to  their  service. 
Theirs  it  is  to  found  a  secular  apostolate,  a  school  of 
prophets  united  by  a  common  faith,  and  pledged  by  the 
sacredness  of  an  intense  conviction  to  urge  on  the  teach- 
ing of  the  new  doctrine  and  the  new  name,  till  the  world 
acknowledges  the  claim  and  gives  adhesion  to  the  master 
whom  they  love  and  reverence. 

Let  us  grant,  then,  that  we  have  in  Robert  Browning 


146      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

undoubtedly  a  great  poet,  but  also  an  undoubtedly  unpopu- 
lar poet.  With  the  exception  of  the  "Ride  from  Ghent 
to  Aix, "  the  "Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin,"  and  the  tender 
and  pathetic  "Evelyn  Hope,"  few  or  none  of  his  poems 
have  won  the  ear  of  the  general  public.  Yet  he  has  pro- 
duced no  fewer  than  twenty-four  volumes,  the  latest  of 
which  was  not  long  since  everywhere  discussed.  No 
writer  of  our  time  has  manifested  greater  fecundity  of 
genius,  versatility  of  style,  or  capacity  of  industry.  Few 
writers  have  ever  had  a  firmer  faith  in  themselves,  and 
have  trusted  more  fully  to  the  secure  awards  of  time.  Now 
that  the  poetry  of  Browning  has  become  a  cult,  his  less 
known  works  have  probably  found  readers;  but  at  the 
time  of  their  publication,  few  but  the  reviewers  had  the 
courage  to  read  them.  There  is  a  story  told  of  Leigh 
Hunt's  having  "Sordello"  sent  him  for  review  at  a  time 
when  he  was  in  weak  health  and  low  spirits.  After  an 
hour's  fruitless  effort,  he  flung  the  book  aside,  crying: 
"My  brain  is  failing!  I  must  be  mad!  I  have  not  under- 
stood a  word."  His  wife  then  took  the  book  up,  and  it 
was  agreed  that  upon  the  test  of  her  ability  to  understand 
it  the  question  of  her  husband's  sanity  must  turn.  She  at 
length  flung  it  down,  saying:  "My  dear,  don't  be  alarmed. 
You're  not  mad;  but  the  man  who  wrote  it  is!"  Many 
persons  have  closed  "Sordello"  with  the  same  angry  com- 
ment, and  there  are  isolated  passages  in  Browning  more 
difficult  than  anything  in  "Sordello."  How  is  it,  then, 
that  the  man  whose  mastery  of  humor  is  so  finely  dis- 
played in  the  "Pied  Piper,"  whose  pathos  and  power 
of  narrative  have  such  splendid  attestations  as  "Evelyn 
Hope"  and  the  "Ride  from  Ghent  to  Aix,"  who  can 
write  with  such  terseness,  simplicity,  and  vigor  as  these 


Robert  Browning  147 

poems  display,  is,  nevertheless,  to  the  bulk  of  English 
readers  a  stone  of  stumbling  and  a  rock  of  offence? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  not  difficult.  Let  it  at 
once  be  granted  that  Robert  Browning  can  write  as  clearly 
as  any  English  poet  when  he  likes,  for  he  has  done  it. 
Open  Browning  at  random,  and  it  will  be  hard  if,  in  half 
an  hour,  you  do  not  come  upon  a  score  of  noble  thoughts, 
admirably  expressed  in  clear-ringing  English,  with  delicate 
attention  to  phrase  and  perfect  adherence  to  the  laws  of 
construction.  Yet  it  must  be  owned  that  in  the  same  half- 
hour  it  is  quite  possible  to  alight  on  passages  where  the 
nominative  has  lost  its  verb  beyond  hope  of  recovery,  and 
phrases  seem  to  have  been  jerked  out  haphazard,  in  a  sort 
of  volcanic  eruption  of  thought  and  temper.  What  is  the 
underlying  cause  of  these  defects  of  style? 

There  are  two  main  causes.  The  first  springs  from 
Browning's  theory  of  poetry.  Browning's  theory  of 
poetry  is  a  serious  one.  Like  all  truly  great  artists,  he 
has  uniformly  recognized  the  dignity  and  responsibility  of 
art.  With  him  poetry  is  not  the  manufacture  of  a  melo- 
dious jingle,  nor  the  elaboration  of  pretty  conceits:  it  is 
as  serious  as  life,  and  is  to  be  approached  with  reverent 
and  righteous  purpose.  It  is,  moreover,  the  noblest  of 
all  intellectual  labors,  and  should  therefore  minister  to  the 
intellect  not  less  than  to  the  emotion.  Into  his  poetry 
Browning  has  put  his  subtlest  and  deepest  thought,  and  he 
uniformly  puts  a  higher  value  on  the  thought  than  the 
method  or  manner  of  its  expression.  In  "Pauline,"  his 
earliest  poem,  published  in  1832,  he  says,  with  a  true 
forecast  of  his  own  powers  and  limitations: 

So  will  I  sing  on,  fast  as  fancies  come; 
Rudely,  the  verse  being  as  the  mood  it  paints. 


148      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

With  him  the  sense  is  more  than  the  sound,  the  substance 
is  more  than  the  form,  the  moral  significance  is  more  than 
the  rhetorical  adornment.  He  has  something  to  say, 
something  of  infinite  moment  and  solemn  import,  and  he 
is  comparatively  careless  of  how  he  says  it.  He  is  the 
Carlyle  of  poetry:  the  message  is  everything,  the  verbal 
vesture  nothing.  It  is  in  this  respect  that  Browning's 
divergence  from  all  other  modern  poets  is  greatest.  He  is 
not  indifferent  to  the  art  and  music  of  words,  but  he  habitu- 
ally treats  them  as  of  secondary  importance.  Naturally, 
the  growth  of  this  temper  has  led  Browning  into  extrava- 
gances of  style,  as  it  did  Carlyle;  many  a  fine  thought  is 
hopelessly  embedded  in  insufficient  and  faulty  phrases, 
and  therefore,  to  the  mass  of  readers  who  do  not  approach 
poetry  with  the  patient  spirit  of  scientific  research,  is 
hopelessly  lost. 

The  second  cause  of  the  occasional  obscurity  of 
Browning's  poetry  is  found  in  the  condensation  of  his 
style.  When  "Paracelsus"  was  published  it  was  declared 
unintelligible,  and  John  Sterling,  one  of  the  acutest  critics 
of  his  day,  accused  it  of  "verbosity."  This  saying  of 
Sterling's  was  reported  to  Browning  by  Miss  Caroline 
Fox,  who  went  on  to  ask:  "Doth  he  know  that  Words- 
worth will  devote  a  fortnight  or  more  to  the  discovery  of 
a  single  word  that  is  the  one  fit  for  his  sonnet?" 

This  criticism  filled  Browning  with  a  dread  of  diffuse- 
ness,  and  henceforth  he  set  himself  never  to  use  two  words 
where  one  would  do.  The  result  of  this  resolve  is,  that 
often  he  does  not  use  words  enough  to  express  his  mean- 
ing. He  uses  one  word,  and  expects  his  reader  to  supply 
two.  It  is  this  which  makes  "Sordello"  the  puzzle  it  is. 
It  is  a  vast  web  of  words,  in  which  the  filaments  are 


Robert  Browning  149 

dropped,  confused,  tangled,  like  the  crumpled  gossamer 
of  a  spider's  web  hastily  detached  and  more  than  half- 
ruined  by  the  touch  of  carelessness. 

There  are  beautiful  thoughts  and  passages  in  "Sor- 
dello, "  .but  they  savor  so  much  of  bookishness,  and 
demand  so  much  antiquarian  knowledge  in  the  reader,  that 
few  are  likely  to  disinter  and  appreciate  them.  For 
instance,  take  this  passage  from  Book  the  Third:  "Fac- 
titious humors"  fall  from  Sordello,  and  turn  him  pure 

As  some  forgotten  vest 
Woven  of  painted  byssus,  silkiest, 
Tufting  the  Tyrrhene  whelk's  pearl-sheeted  lip, 
Left  welter  where  a  trireme  let  it  slip 
I'  the  sea  and  vexed  a  satrap:  so  the  stain 
O'  the  world  forsakes  Sordello:  how  the  tinct 
Loosening  escapes,  cloud  after  cloud. 

Now,  what  is  the  picture  painted  here?  Analyze  it,  and 
this  is  the  result:  An  eastern  satrap,  sailing  upon  a  galley 
or  trireme,  wears  a  vest  of  byssus,  dyed  with  Tyrian 
purple.  He  lets  it  fall  overboard,  and  as  he  looks  down 
through  the  clear  sea  sees  the  purple  dye  escaping  and 
clouding  the  water.  So  Sordello  is  cleansed  from  the 
stain  of  the  world.  It  is  a  very  beautiful  illustration;  but 
its  beauty  is  not  perceived  till  we  recollect  that  purple  is 
taken  from  the  tuft  of  the  "whelk's  pearl-sheeted  lip," 
and  that  a  garment  so  dyed,  if  cast  into  the  sea,  throws 
off  its  color  in  tremulous  clouds.  Does  any  one  see  the 
meaning  at  first  sight?  And  how  many  might  read  it  and 
never  see  any  meaning  in  it  at  all?  This  is  an  example  of 
Browning  in  his  worst  mood;  and  we  cannot  wonder, 
when  we  consider  it,  that  simple-minded  poets  like  Charles 
Mackay  called  him  the  "High  Priest  of  the  Unintelligible"; 


150      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

or  that  Browning  societies  have  had  to  be  invented  to 
reduce  his  recondite  fancies  to  lucidity. 

These,  then,  are  the  two  main  sources  of  all  that  is 
obscure  in  Browning's  writings.  The  very  fact  that  for 
many  years  he  was  a  solitary  worker,  writing  almost  for 
his  own  pleasure,  naturally  confirmed  the  defects  of  his 
style.  The  obscurity  is  never  of  the  thought;  that,  in- 
deed, is  so  clear  and  luminous  to  him  that  he  seems  inca- 
pable of  conceiving  it  as  confused  in  the  vision  of  his  reader. 
The  thought  is  clear  as  the  sun;  but  the  atmosphere  of 
words  through  which  we  perceive  it  is  murky,  and  the 
body  of  the  thought  looms  through  it  dim  and  strange. 
And  so  Mr.  Swinburne  has  spoken  with  equal  felicity  and 
truth  of  Browning's  faculty  of  "decisive  and  incisive 
thought,"  and  has  said:  "He  is  something  too  much  the 
reverse  of  obscure;  he  is  too  brilliant  and  subtle  for  the 
ready  readers  of  a  ready  writer."  The  case  cannot  be 
better  put  than  in  the  words  of  one  of  his  most  earnest 
and  intelligent  students:  "He  has  never  ignored  beauty, 
but  he  has  neglected  it  in  the  desire  for  significance.  He 
has  never  meant  to  be  rugged,  but  he  has  become  so  in  the 
striving  after  strength.  He  never  intended  to  be  obscure, 
but  he  has  become  so  from  the  condensation  of  style  which 
was  the  excess  of  significance  and  strength."  This  should 
constantly  be  remembered,  if  we  are  to  approach  Brown- 
ing's poetry  with  the  intelligence  which  interprets  and  the 
sympathy  which  appreciates. 

Were  Browning  not  a  great  poet,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  forgive  him  such  defects  as  these.  We  should  be 
inclined  to  dismiss  him  with  the  brief  aphorism  of  the 
Swedish  poet,  Tegner,  who  said:  "The  obscurely  uttered 
is  the  obscurely  thought."  But  Browning  is  one  of  the 


Robert  Browning  15  j 

greatest  of  poets,  and  has  so  profoundly  affected  the 
thought  of  his  time,  that  however  the  ordinary  reader  may 
be  repelled  by  the  grotesqueness  of  his  style,  it  is  emi- 
nently worth  the  while  even  of  that  distinguished  indi- 
vidual to  endeavor  to  understand  him.  We  freely  grant 
that  poets  should  not  need  interpreters;  but  where  there 
is  something  of  infinite  moment  to  be  interpreted  it  is  well 
to  set  aside  fixed  rules  and  habitual  maxims.  Genius  is 
so  rare  a  gift  that  we  must  take  it  on  its  own  terms,  and 
we  cannot  afford  to  quarrel  with  the  conditions  it  may 
impose  on  us.  It  speaks  its  own  language,  and  is  indiffer- 
ent alike  to  the  reproach  or  desire  of  those  whom  it  ad- 
dresses. The  only  question  for  us  is,  whether  it  is  worth 
our  while  to  endeavor  to  penetrate  the  meaning  and  ascer- 
tain the  teaching  of  any  writer  who,  through  natural  limi- 
tations or  willful  indifference,  renders  the  study  of  his 
works  difficult  and  perplexing.  In  the  case  of  Browning, 
I  reply  that  no  more  remunerative  study  can  be  found 
than  in  the  careful  reading  of  his  works.  He  embodies 
some  of  the  most  curious  and  pervasive  tendencies  of  nine- 
teenth-century literature,  and  in  subsequent  chapters  I 
shall  endeavor  to  show  what  Browning's  teaching  is,  and 
to  estimate  his  influence  in  literature. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  qualities  of  Browning's  poetry  are  usually  the  first 
to  make  themselves  felt? 

2.  In  what  way  has  Browning's  influence  been  felt  most 
deeply? 

3.  Why  is  it  not  safe  to  judge  of  a  poet's  influence  by  his 
popularity? 

4.  What  is  frequently  the  common  destiny  of  great  thinkers? 


152      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

5.  What  poems  of  Robert  Browning  are  best  known  to  the 
general  public? 

6.  What  story  is  told  of  "Sordello"? 

7.  What  is  probably  the  chief  cause  of  Browning's  obscure 
style? 

8.  Give  another  reason  for  this  defect. 

9.  Why  is  it  worth  while  to  study  Browning  in  spite  of  his 
defects? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Life  and  Letters  of  Robert  Browning.     Mrs.  Sutherland  Orr. 

Robert  Browning.    William  Sharp.    (Great  Writers  Series.) 

Robert  Browning,  Personalia.     Edmund  Gosse. 

Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Browning's  Poetry.  Hiram 
Corson. 

A  Handbook  to  tJie  Works  of  Robert  Browning.  Mrs. 
Sutherland  Orr. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

BROWNING'S  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

One  of  the  most  interesting  facts  about  Robert  Brown- 
ing is,  that  he  has  no  touch  of  the  recluse  about  him;  he 
is  the  child  of  cities,  not  of  solitudes.  In  the  writings  of 
Wordsworth  and  Tennyson,  dissimilar  as  they  are  in  many 
respects,  there  is  this  bond  of  likeness — they  breathe  the 
air  and  silence  of  seclusion.  With  the  one  it  is  the  silence 
of  the  mountains,  with  the  other  the  ordered  calm  of  Eng- 
lish rural  life.  All  that  Wordsworth  has  written  is  steeped 
in  the  very  spirit  of  solitude,  and  the  mighty  silence  of  the 
hills  has  lent  a  majesty  to  his  conceptions — an  atmosphere, 
as  it  were,  of  dignified  simplicity.  In  Tennyson,  also,  one 
is  always  conscious  of  the  presence  of  nature.  The  wind 
that  blows  across  his  page  is  full  of  the  dewy  freshness  of 
green  lawns  and  rustling  trees.  The  city,  with  its  moil 
and  grime,  its  passionate  intensity  of  life  and  action,  is  far 
away.  He  sees  its  distant  lights  flaring  like  a  dusky 
dawn,  but  he  has  little  care  to  penetrate  its  mysteries. 
And  in  most  modern  poets  the  same  remoteness  from  the 
passionate  stress  of  life  is  felt.  What  is  true  of  Words- 
worth and  Tennyson  is  equally  true  of  Keats  and  Morris. 
The  fundamental  idea  in  each  seems  to  be  that  the  life  of 
the  recluse  alone  is  favorable  to  poetry,  and  that  the  life 
of  action  in  the  great  centers  of  civilization  is  fatal  to 
works  of  imagination. 

To  this  temper  Browning  furnishes  a  splendid  excep- 


154      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

tion.  Born  a  Londoner,  and  proud  to  own  himself  a  citi- 
zen of  the  greatest  city  upon  earth,  it  is  with  London, 
Florence,  and  Venice  that  his  name  is  imperishably  inter- 
woven; not  the  Lake  district  of  Wordsworth,  nor  the 
Geneva  of  Byron,  nor  the  Spezzia  of  Shelley.  In  conti- 
nental travel  he  is  evidently  more  familiar  with  the  book- 
stalls of  Florence  than  the  snow-solitudes  of  the  high 
Alps.  He  was  a  familiar  figure  in  society  for  many  years. 
He  does  not  shun  the  crowd:  he  seeks  and  loves  it.  The 
sense  of  numbers  quickens  his  imagination.  The  great 
drama  of  human  life  absorbs  him.  The  glimpses  of  pure 
nature  he  gives  us  are  curiously  few.  He  can  describe  a 
lunar  rainbow,  but  he  saw  it  not  among  the  Alps,  but 
from  the  dull  greensward  of  a  London  common.  Practi- 
cally he  has  little  to  say  about  nature  as  such.  When  he 
does  describe  any  bit  of  scenery  he  does  it  with  scientific 
accuracy.  His  pictures  of  Italy  are  full  of  the  very  spirit 
of  Italian  scenery,  and  have  an  almost  photographic  exac- 
titude. But  they  are  the  mere  by-play  of  his  mind.  It  is 
Italian  life  which  fascinates  him,  not  Italian  scenery.  It 
is  live  everywhere  that  moves  him  to  utterance,  and  in  the 
crowd  of  men,  and  in  the  tangled  motives  of  men,  and  the 
constant  dramas  and  tragedies  bred  by  the  passions  and 
instincts  of  the  human  heart,  Browning  has  found  the  food 
upon  which  his  genius  has  thriven.  In  this  respect  Brown- 
ing occupies  an  entirely  unique  position  among  modern 
poets.  He  concerns  himself  so  little  with  the  message 
of  nature,  and  so  much  with  the  soul  of  man,  that  his 
whole  poetry  may  be  called  the  Poetry  of  the  Soul:  its 

Shifting  fancies  and  celestial  lights, 

With  all  its  grand  orchestral  silences 

To  keep  the  pauses  of  the  rhythmic  sounds. 


The  Spirit  of  Browning's  Religion        171 

Not  only  is  there  no  despair:   there  is  no  touch  of  dis- 
heartenment  even  in  Browning — 

Languor  is  not  in  his  heart, 
Weakness  is  not  in  his  word, 
Weariness  not  on  his  brow. 

He  awaits  the  revelation  of  eternity;  then  all  will  be  made 
clear.  The  lost  leader,  who  has  forsaken  the  great  cause 
of  progress — "just  for  a  handful  of  silver  he  left  us"- 
may  never  be  received  back  save  in  doubt,  hesitation,  and 
pain  by  his  old  comrades;  but  the  estrangement  of  earth 
will  not  outlast  earth — 

Let  him  receive  the  new  knowledge  and  wait  us 
Pardoned  in  heaven,  the  first  by  the  throne! 

Caponsacchi,  the  great  and  noble  priest,  the  "soldier- 
saint"  of  "The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  must  needs  hence- 
forth pass  through  life  with  the  shadow  of  Pompilia's 
sweet  presence  laid  across  his  heart,  and  all  the  purest 
aspiration  of  his  life  covered  in  her  grave.  Well,  is  there 
not  a  further  world,  where  they  neither  marry  nor  are 
given  in  marriage? 

Oh,  how  right  it  is!  how  like  Jesus  Christ 

To  say  that! 

So  let  him  wait  God's  instant,  men  call  years; 

Meanwhile  hold  hard  by  truth  and  his  great  soul, 

Do  out  the  duty! 

The  dying  Pompilia  sees  how  the  love  of  souls  like  his 
interprets  the  meaning  of  the  love  of  God,  and  cries: 

Through  such  souls  alone 
God,  stooping,  shows  sufficient  of  His  light 
For  us  i'  the  dark  to  rise  by.     And  I  rise. 

Even  when  Browning  stands  in  such  a  place  as  the 
morgue,  amid  the  ghastliness  of  tragic  failure  and  despair, 


1 72      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

touched  though  he  be  with  mournfulness,  yet  this  strong 
and  living  hope  does  not  leave  him,  and  he  still  can  write: 

It's  wiser  being  good  than  bad, 

It's  safer  being  meek  than  fierce, 
It's  fitter  being  sane  than  mad. 

My  own  hope  is,  the  sun  will  pierce 
The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched; 

That,  after  Last,  returns  the  First, 
Though  a  wide  compass  first  be  fetched; 

That  what  began  best  can't  end  worst, 

Nor  what  God  blest  once  prove  accurst. 

In  other  words,  whatever  dreary  intervals  there  may 
be  of  folly,  darkness,  misery,  the  world  God  blessed  in  the 
beginning  will  roll  round  into  the  light  at  last;  and  when 
His  purpose  is  complete,  there  will  be  a  new  heaven  and 
a  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  is  one  of  the  surest  signs  of  a  great  poet? 

2.  Is  Browning  an  optimist  because  he  does  not  know  life? 

3.  What  is  the  story  of  the  poem  "  Easter  Day  "? 

4.  How  does  Browning  emphasize  the  importance  of  choos- 
ing the  highest? 

5.  How  does  he  express  the  doctrine  of  unselfishness? 

6.  What  great  truths  are  illustrated  in  "  Instans  Tyrannus  "? 

7.  Give  an  instance  of  his  teaching  that  God  is  Love. 

8.  Show  how  he  regards  the  next  world  as  completing  this 
one. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Browning  as  a  Religious  Teacher.     Henry  Jones. 
Studies  in  the  Poetry  of  Browning.     James  Fotheringham. 
Browning 's  Women.     Mary  E.  Burt. 

Broivning  Studies.  Select  Papers  by  Members  of  the 
Browning  Society.  Edited  by  Edward  Berdoe. 

Boston  Browning  Society  Papers.    (Selected.)     1886-1897. 


CHAPTER    XVI 

BROWNING'S  ATTITUDE  TO  CHRISTIANITY- 
CONCLUDING  SURVEY 

In  the  last  chapter  we  noticed  that  one 'of  the  abnormal 
growths  of  modern  poetry  is  a  poetry  of  negation.  We 
may  add  that  this,  in  its  last  development,  has  become  a 
poetry  of  despair.  And  the  source  of  that  despair  is 
inability  to  receive  the  truths  of  Christianity.  Since  the 
advent  of  Goethe  a  movement  very  similar  to  the  Renais- 
sance in  Italy  has  passed  over  the  whole  of  Europe. 
There  has  been  a  return  to  paganism,  concurrently  with 
a  widespread  revival  'in  art  and  culture.  The  dogmas  of 
the  church  have  been  vehemently  assailed,  and  the  ethical 
teachings  of  Christianity  disputed.  The  movement  initi- 
ated by  Goethe  has  spread  throughout  the  world.  It  has 
received  impulse  from  strange  quarters,  and  given  impulse 
in  strange  directions.  Its  legitimate  outcome  in  Germany 
is  found  in  the  long  line  of  great  scholars  who  have 
devoted  indefatigable  genius  and  patience  to  the  work  of 
destructive  Biblical  criticism.  There  may  appear  to  be  a 
wide  enough  gulf  between  the  calm  paganism  of  Goethe 
and  the  vehement  controversial  temper  of  German  theologi- 
cal scholarship,  but  nevertheless  the  one  is  a  true  child  of 
the  other. 

Added  to  this,  there  must  be  reckoned  the  extraordi- 
nary growth  of  natural  science  during  the  present  century. 
The  minds  of  the  greatest  thinkers  have  been  riveted  on 


174      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

the  problem  of  the  origin  of  things.  The  results  of  their 
investigations  have  been  published  with  the  hardihood  and 
confidence  of  complete  conviction.  In  their  researches  as 
to  the  working  of  natural  law  they  have  completely  ignored 
all  that  is  supernatural.  Their  temper  toward  the  super- 
natural has  been  one  of  contemptuous  indifference  or  embit- 
tered hostility.  Thus,  then,  two  forces  of  immense 
strength  have  been  steadily  at  work  upon  the  structure  of 
received  opinion:  the  one  force,  fearless  rationalism;  the 
other,  fearless  paganism.  Culture  has  been  preached  as 
the  true  substitute  for  Christianity,  art,  and  beauty  as  the 
all-sufficient  gospels  for  human  life.  We  have  only  to 
turn  to  the  literature  of  the  last  half-century  to  see  how 
far  these  influences  have  permeated.  The  essayist  and 
poet  have  alike  conspired  to  preach  the  new  doctrine. 
The  stream  of  tendency  thus  created  has  sufficient  exam- 
ples in  the  beautiful  paganism  of  Keats  and  the  garrulous 
medigevalism  of  Morris. 

But  there  is  another  class  of  writers  who  have  not  been 
able  so  easily  to  dismiss  the  great  beliefs  by  which  centu- 
ries of  men  and  women  have  lived  and  striven.  They 
have  been  allured,  fascinated,  and  repelled  alternately; 
they  have  hoped  and  doubted;  in  their  voices  is  the  sound 
of  weeping,  in  their  words  the  vibration  of  long  suffering; 
for  whatever  attitude  they  may  have  taken  toward  Christi- 
anity they  have  never  relapsed  into  reckless  indifference. 
This  eager  scrutiny  of  religious  dogmas  by  the  best  and 
keenest  minds  of  the  age  is,  at  least,  a  proof  that  such 
men  have  been  alive,  and  even  agonizingly  alive,  to  the 
tremendous  importance  of  those  dogmas.  Poetry  in  the 
nineteenth  century  has  sought  to  be  the  minister  of  theo- 
logical truth  not  less  than  of  artistic  beauty,  and  as  a  con- 


Browning's  Attitude  to  Christianity       175 

sequence  the  theological  problems  of  the  century,  and  in 
less  degree  the  scientific  problems  also,  have  been  inextri- 
cably interwoven  with  its  fine  warp  and  woof  of  exquisite 
creation.  So  that  let  what  will  be  said  about  the  faith- 
lessness of  the  nineteenth  century,  nevertheless  the  pres- 
ence of  Jesus  Christ  in  nineteenth-century  literature  is  one 
of  its  most  remarkable  and  indisputable  characteristics. 

But  the  solitary  issue  of  this  intermingling  of  theology 
with  poetry  is  not  perplexity  or  sadness.  There  is  found 
a  very  different  culmination  in  one  poet  at  least,  and  that 
poet  is  Browning.  Browning  has  attacked  theology  with 
the  zeal  and  fervor  of  a  born  disputant.  He  is  not  merely 
a  great  religious  poet,  but  is  distinctively  a  theological 
poet.  He  has  deliberately  chosen  for  the  exercise  of  his 
art  the  most  subtle  problems  of  theology,  and  has'  made 
his  verse  the  vehicle  for  the  statement  of  theological  diffi- 
culties and  personal  beliefs.  The  historical  evidences  and 
arguments  of  Christianity  have  exercised  upon  him  a  deep 
and  enduring  fascination.  In  "Pauline,"  his  earliest 
poem,  the  vision  of  Christ  has  visited  Browning,  and  he 
cries — 

0  Thou  pale  form,  so  dimly  seen,  deep-eyed, 

1  have  denied  Thee  calmly — do  I  not 

Pant  when  I  read  of  Thy  consummate  deeds, 
And  burn  to  see  Thy  calm  pure  truth  outflash 
The  brightest  gleams  of  earth's  philosophy? 
Do  I  not  shake  to  hear  ought  question  Thee? 
If  I  am  erring,  save  me,  madden  me, 
Take  from  me  powers  and  pleasures,  let  me  die 
Ages,  so  I  see  Thee! 

That  vision  of  Christ  has  been  not  only  an  ever-present 
but  an  ever-growing  vision  with  Browning. 

This  spirit  of  passionate  reverence  for  Christ,  which 


176      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Browning  thus  expresses  in  his  first  considerable  poem,  is 
the  spirit  which  dominates  his  entire  writings.  The  deep- 
est mystery  of  Christianity  is  Christ  himself;  that,  indeed, 
is  its  one  mystery.  Browning  has  been  quick  to'  realize 
this,  and  habitually  perceives  and  teaches,  with  unerring 
keenness,  that  in  Christ  all  mysteries  have  solution,  or 
without  him  are  left  forever  dark  and  impenetrable.  The 
method  of  argument  he  pursues  is  peculiarly  his  own. 
He  ranks  himself  for  the  moment  with  the  Rationalist,  and 
having  detailed  his  conclusions,  goes  on  to  probe  them. 
For  this  purpose  dialectic  skill,  irony,  humor,  and  the 
subtlest  analysis  are  his  weapons.  He  refuses  to  be  con- 
tent with  negation;  it  is  not  enough  to  say  what  you  do 
not  believe,  you  must  realize  what  you  do  believe.  He 
pushes  back  the  burden  of  proof  upon  the  doubter,  and 
says  men  have  an  equal  right  to  demand  the  demonstra- 
tion of  a  doubt  as  of  a  creed.  When  every  shred  of  evi- 
dence has  been  weighed  and  tested,  then  comes  the  moment 
to  ask  what  is  left,  and  the  final  verdict  depends,  not  on 
the  letter  of  the  evidence,  but  the  spirit;  not  on  anybody 
of  oral  attestation,  but  on  the  soul  which  witnesses  within 
a  man.  This,  with  many  variations  and  differences,  is, 
upon  the  whole,  a  fair  statement  of  Browning's  method 
of  argument,  and  the  result  is  never  left  in  doubt.  In 
"A  Death  in  the  Desert,"  where  St.  John  is  supposed  to 
utter  his  last  words  of  belief,  the  verdict,  not  indeed  of 
the  man  Cerinthus,  who  hears  the  great  confession,  but  of 
the  man  who  adds  the  final  note,  is: 

If  Christ,  as  thou  affirmest,  be  of  men, 
Mere  man,  the  first  and  best,  but  nothing  more, 
Account  Him,  for  reward  of  what  He  was, 
Now  and  forever,  wretchedest  of  all. 


Browning's  Attitude  to  Christianity       177 

Can  a  mere  man  do  this? 
Yet  Christ  saith  this  He  lived  and  died  to  do. 
Call  Christ  then  the  illimitable  God, 
Or  lost! 

and  he  significantly  adds — 

But  'twas  Cerinthus  that  is  lost. 

In  the  "Epistle  of  Karshish, "  in  which  the  strange 
story  of  Lazarus  is  debated  from  the  physician's  point  of 
view,  the  writer  finally  rises  into  a  very  ecstasy  of  faith, 
and  the  poem  closes  with  this  passionate  exclamation: 

The  very  God!  think,  Abib;  dost  thou  think? 
So,  the  All-Great  were  the  All-Loving  too — 
So,  through  the  thunder  conies  a  human  voice, 
Saying,  "  O  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here! 
Face,  My  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  Myself! 
Thou  hast  no  power,  nor  may  conceive  of  Mine. 
But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  Myself  to  love, 
And  thou  must  love  Me  who  have  died  for  thee." 

It  cannot  be  said  that  there  is  the  faintest  touch  of 
intolerance  or  scorn  for  honest  doubt  in  Browning's 
poetry.  Yet  no  man  of  our  days  has  pierced  it  with  so 
many  telling  shafts  of  irony  and  reason.  He  acknowl- 
edges the  difficulties  of  belief,  and  it  is  plain  to  every 
reader  that  Browning  has  wrestled  sorely  with  the  angel 
in  the  night,  with  that  impalpable  and  dreadful  shape 
which  has  all  but  overwhelmed  him.  But  the  morning 
has  broken  and  brought  its  benediction.  If  the  difficulties 
of  belief  are  great,  the  difficulties  of  unbelief  are  greater. 
He  assumes  that  there  must  be  many  unexplored  remain- 
ders in  the  world  of  thought.  Well,  what  then?  Because 
some  things  are  hidden,  are  there  none  revealed? 


178      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

What,  my   soul?     See   so   far  and   no  farther?     When  doors 

great  and  small, 
Nine-and-ninety  flew  ope  at  our  touch,  should  the  hundredth 

appal? 
In  the  least  things  have  faith,  yet  distrust  in  the  greatest  of  all. 

That  were  the  last  unreasonableness  of  ignorance,  the  final 
folly  of  imbecility.  No;  the  wiser  act  is  to  trust  where 
actual  knowledge  fails.  Faith  is  a  very  fine  word,  but 

You  must  mix  some  uncertainty 
With  faith  if  you  would  have  faith  be. 

If  a  scientific  faith  is  absurd,  and  "frustrates  the  very  end 
'twas  meant  to  serve,"  he  will  rest  content  with  a  mere 
probability — 

So  long  as  there  be  just  enough 
To  pin  my  faith  to,  though  it  hap 
Only  at  points;  from  gap  to  gap, 
One  hangs  up  a  huge  curtain  so, 
Grandly,  nor  seeks  to  have  it  go 
Foldless  and  flat  along  the  wall. 
What  care  I  if  some  interval 
Of  life  less  plainly  may  depend 
On  God?     I'd  hang  there  to  the  end. 

Moreover,  it  is  part  of  God's  good  discipline  to  educate 
us  by  illusion;  the  point  of  victory,  the  prize  of  the  high 
calling,  perpetually  recedes  to  the  man  who  presses  toward 
the  mark. 

We  do  not  see  it,  where  it  is 
At  the  beginning  of  the  race; 
As  we  proceed,  it  shifts  its  place, 
And  where  we  look  for  crowns  to  fall, 
We  find  the  tug's  to  come — that's  all. 

Thus  the  uncertainties  of  knowledge  are  in  themselves  a 
beneficent  training  for  the  spirit  of  man;  they  sting  him 


Browning's  Attitude  to  Christianity        179 

with  this  divine  hunger  for  full  light,  they  soften  him  to 
childlike  blessedness  of  mere  trust,  and  tend  to  the  more 
real  and  vivid  hold  upon  the  creed  itself,  by  shaking  from 
it  "the  torpor  of  assurance." 

No  poet  of  our  time  has  so  consistently  attacked  the 
darker  and  more  tangled  problems  of  human  conduct. 
He  confesses  that  "serene  deadness"  puts  him  out  of 
temper.  His  sympathies,  on  the  other  hand,  go  out  irre- 
sistibly toward  any  sort  of  life,  however  strangely  mistaken 
or  at  variance  with  custom,  which  has  real,  throbbing, 
energetic  vitality  in  it.  To  him  there  is  an  overwhelming 
fascination  in  misunderstood  men,  and  the  more  tangled 
and  intricate  is  the  problem  of  character  and  action  the 
more  eagerly  does  he  approach  it.  Not  unnaturally  this 
tendency  of  Browning's  genius  has  led  him  through  many 
of  the  darker  labyrinths  of  human  motive,  and  occasion- 
ally, as  in  "Mr.  Sludge,  the  Medium,"  the  riddle  has  not 
been  worth  the  prolonged  application  he  has  devoted  to 
it.  But  in  no  class  of  poems  is  Browning's  intense  reli- 
gious conviction  more  remarkably  displayed.  The  same 
retreat  upon  mere  faith  which  he  makes  in  subtle  ques- 
tions of  theology  he  observes  also  in  dealing  with  the 
mysteries  of  human  conduct.  His  method  of  treatment 
is  twofold.  The  majority  of  his  poems  which  deal  with 
character  and  conduct  deal  with  character  and  conduct 
more  or  less  imperfect.  In  all  such  cases  the  blemish  is 
laid  bare  with  unerring  accuracy.  There  are  no  glozing 
words  to  cover  moral  lapses,  no  spun  purple  of  fine 
phrases  to  hide  the  hideousness  of  spiritual  leprosy.  But 
Browning  describes  such  lives,  not  to  display  their  corrup- 
tion, but  to  discover  some  seed  of  true  life  which  may  yet 
be  hidden  in  them.  Few  lives  are  so  evil  but  that  some 


180      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

golden  threads  are  woven  in  the  coarse  fabric;  some  im- 
pulses are  left  which,  if  followed,  may  be  the  clue  to  life 
eternal. 

Oh,  we're  sunk  enough,  God  knows! 
But  not  quite  so  sunk  that  moments, 
Sure,  though  seldom,  are  denied  us 
When  the  spirit's  true  endowments 
Stand  out  plainly  from  its  false  ones, 
And  apprise  it,  if  pursuing 
On  the  right  way  or  the  wrong  way, 
To  its  triumph  or  undoing. 

The  "poor  impulse,"  the  one  obscure,  true  instinct, 
which  vibrates  under  a  smothered  or  sinful  nature,  may 
be  the  starting-point  towards  ideal  goodness.  But  if  man 
be  evil,  God  is  good,  and  the  soul  of  the  universe  is  just. 
Browning  is  bound  to  admit  that  some  natures  seem  hope- 
lessly corrupt;  at  all  events,  he  fails  to  find  the  germ  of 
renovation  in  them.  They  have  chosen  the  evil  part, 
which  cannot  be  taken  away  from  them.  They  have  had 
their  choice — 

The  earthly  joys  lay  palpable — 
A  taint,  in  each  distinct  as  well; 
The  heavenly  flitted,  faint  and  rare, 
Above  them,  but  as  truly  were 
Taintless,  so,  in  their  nature  best. 
Thy  choice  was  earth;  thou  didst  attest 
'Twas  fitter  spirit  should  subserve 
The  flesh. 

When  Browning  confronts  such  natures,  his  second  method 
comes  into  play;  he  falls  back  upon  faith — faith  in  the 
wise  order  and  infinite  goodness  of  God.  The  most 
marked  example  of  this  method  is  in  that  splendid  dramatic 
sketch,  "Pippa  Passes."  No  more  awful  picture  of  guilt 


Robert  Browning — Concluding  Survey      181 

triumphing  in  its  guiltiness,  of  corruption  intoxicated  with 
the  abandonment  and  depraved  joy  of  its  own  wickedness, 
has  any  poet  given  us  than  the  Ottima  of  that  poem. 
There  stands  the  villa,  with  its  closed  shutters;  within  it 
the  murdered  man,  and  the  guilty  woman  pouring  out  her 
confessions  of  passion  to  the  man  who  slew  him.  Can 
human  action  produce  a  more  hideous  combination?  Yet 
the  sun  shines  fair,  and  "God  has  not  said  a  word." 
Has  God's  good  government  of  things  broken  down,  then? 
No,  indeed.  Pippa  passes — Pippa,  the  poor  girl  with  her 
one  day's  holiday  in  the  whole  year,  yet  happy,  cheerful, 
trustful;  and  as  she  pauses  she  sings  rebuke  to  our  doubts 
of  God,  and  terror  to  the  black  heart  of  Ottima: 

The  year's  at  the  spring, 
And  day's  at  the  morn; 
Morning's  at  seven; 
The  hillside's  dew-pearled; 
The  lark's  on  the  wing, 
God's  in  His  heaven, 
All's  right  with  the  world. 

It  is  thus  Browning,  like  many  a  great  spirit  before 
him,  falls  back  upon  faith  in  God,  saying  in  effect  what 
Abraham  said  when  confronted  with  the  corruption  of  man 
and  the  judgment  of  God:  "Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth  do  right?" 

The  prevalent  impression  which  the  work  of  Browning 
leaves  upon  the  reader  is  twofold:  he  makes  us  feel  the 
greatness  of  his  mind  and  the  intensity  and  breadth  of  his 
sympathies.  It  is  a  vast  world  of  thought  to  which  Brown- 
ing introduces  his  reader.  He  claims  from  him  absolute 
attention,  the  entire  absorption  of  the  neophyte,  whose 
whole  moral  earnestness  is  given  to  his  task.  Like  all 


1 82      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

neophytes,  we  have  to  submit  to  a  process  of  initiation. 
In  the  world  of  Browning's  thought  there  is  much  that  is 
strange,  much  that  is  new,  much  that  is  grotesque. 

Perhaps  the  best  way  of  sifting  the  perfect  from  the 
imperfect  in  Browning's  work  would  be  to  ask  what  we 
should  care  least  to  lose,  and  what  we  would  most  will- 
ingly forget.  If  we  had  to  submit  to  an  ideal  justice  for 
the  final  jurisdiction  of  immortality  the  poems  most  likely 
to  win  him  the  award  of  age-long  fame,  which  should  we 
choose  to  support  the  claim? 

When  we  apply  this  test  to  Browning's  poetry  the  result 
is  soon  reached.  First  of  all  stands  the  "Ring  and  the 
Book."  In  force  of  conception,  skill  and  delicacy  of 
treatment,  subtlety  of  thought,  purity,  power,  and  passion, 
the  "Ring  and  the  Book"  is  Browning's  masterpiece. 
Wandering  in  Florence,  Browning  discovers  on  a  book- 
stall an  old  manuscript  volume  containing  the  pleadings  of 
a  murder  trial  at  Rome  in  1698.  The  whole  case  is  one 
of  those  strange  tangles  of  evidence  which  dull  people 
usually  discredit  until  the  passions  of  human  life  flame 
forth,  and  the  thing  is  a  dramatic  actuality,  done  before 
their  very  eyes.  The  murdered  woman  is  Pompilia,  who 
has  fled  from  her  husband  with  the  priest  Caponsacchi; 
the  murderer  is  the  husband.  At  first  sight  this  appears 
merely  a  low  drama  of  vicious  passion  and  brutal  revenge; 
but  as  Browning  pores  over  the  pleadings  and  unravels 
the  tangled  skein  of  evidence  it  reveals  itself  in  a  very 
different  way.  As  he  reads,  the  dark  shadows  of  crime 
recede,  revealing  in  transfiguring  brightness  the  figure  of 
Pompilia,  "young,  good,  beautiful,"  clothed  upon  with 
the  raiment  which  is  from  heaven,  the  beauty  of  holiness, 
the  divine  dignity  of  goodness,  the  touching,  inimitable 


Robert  Browning — Concluding  Survey      183 

freshness  and  purity  of  childlike  innocence.  A  mere  child 
in  years,  she  is  the  spoil  of  her  husband's  avarice,  then 
the  victim  of  his  malignity  and  disappointed  cupidity,  until 
at  last  she  flies,  to  save  her  babe's  life,  with  the  young 
priest  who  has  promised  to  defend  her.  Browning's 
method  is  to  let  each  witness  tell  his  own  tale,  making 
the  written  report  his  basis  of  fact,  on  which  he  casts  his 
own  quick,  penetrating  light  of  interpretation.  This  is 
accomplished  in  twelve  books.  The  one-half  of  Rome 
gives  its  opinion,  takes  merely  the  outward  appearance  of 
the  facts,  and  judges  Guido  justified  in  the  murder.  The 
other  half  of  Rome  accepts  Pompilia's  innocence,  and 
perceives  that  from  first  to  last  she  has  been  a  victim. 
Then  follow  the  chief  actors  in  the  drama.  Guido  makes 
his  defence — the  defence  of  a  man  thoroughly  shrewd, 
with  more  than  a  touch  of  fanaticism,  alive  to  his  posi- 
tion, and  alert  to  use  every  waft  of  popular  prejudice  in 
his  favor.  After  him  Caponsacchi  tells  his  tale;  how  he 
came  to  enter  the  church,  and  was  urged  by  great  priests 
to  put  only  an  easy  interpretation  on  the  vows  which 
seemed  to  him  so  strenuously  solemn;  how  he  came  to 
recognize  in  Pompilia  a  womanhood  he  had  never  before 
imagined — so  sadly  sweet,  so  grave,  so  pure,  that  he  felt 
lifted  into  higher  thoughts  as  by  the  vision  of  a  saint;  how 
God  and  Pompilia  kept  company  in  his  thoughts,  so  that 
when  the  hour  came  that  he  could  serve  her  he  seized  it 
with  a  simple  chivalry,  and  did  it  as  God's  plain  duty,  then 
and  there  made  clear  to  him.  Then  Pompilia  herself, 
dying  fast,  in  broken  snatches,  tells  the  story  of  her  life. 
Finally,  the  old  pope  sums  up  the  case,  giving  verdict  of 
death  against  Guido,  and  Guido  himself  pours  out  his  last 
despairing  utterances,  which  reach  their  tragic  climax  in  the 


184      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

cry  to  his  murdered  wife  to  save  him,  thus  unconsciously 
witnessing  to  the  purity  he  had  defamed  and  despised. 

The  "Ring  and  the  Book"  is  the  most  astonishing 
work  of  genius  of  our  time,  and  if  the  narrations  of  Guide, 
Caponsacchi,  and  Pompilia  do  not  escape  oblivion,  it  is 
hard  to  say  what  other  poetry  of  our  day  is  likely  to 
endure  and  win  the  suffrages  of  posterity. 

Another  poem  which  it  is  impossible  to  omit  in  a  cate- 
gory of  Browning's  greatest  works  is  "Paracelsus."  It 
may  well  take  rank  with  the  "Ring  and  the  Book"  in 
nobility  of  design  and  expression;  but  perhaps  the  most 
wonderful  thing  about  it  is  the  vision  of  evolution  which 
is  found  in  its  concluding  pages — pages,  let  it  be  noted, 
which  were  written  many  years  before  Darwin  had  pub- 
lished his  "Origin  of  Species."  Let  him  who  would 
measure  accurately  the  immense  sweep  and  power  of 
Browning's  genius  turn  to  the  last  fifty  pages  of  "Para- 
celsus." They  contain  passages  which  cannot  be  read, 
even  after  many  readings,  without  astonishment.  Never 
has  blank  verse  been  handled  with  fuller  mastery;  never 
has  it  been  sustained  at  a  greater  height  of  majesty,  even 
by  Milton,  the  greatest  of  all  masters  in  blank  verse. 
What  largeness  of  utterance,  and  what  a  picture  of  God's 
creative  joy,  and  of  the  earth's  rebirth  in  spring,  is  there 
in  lines  like  these: 

In  the  solitary  waste  strange  groups 

Of  young  volcanos  come  up,  Cyclops-like, 

Staring  together  with  their  eyes  on  flame — 

God  tastes  a  pleasure  in  their  uncouth  pride. 

Then  all  is  still;  earth  is  a  wintry  clod: 

But  spring-wind,  like  a  dancing  psaltress,  passes 

Over  its  breast  to  waken  it:  rare  verdure 

Buds  tenderly  upon  rough  banks. 


Robert  Browning — Concluding  Survey      185 

The  lark 

Soars  up  and  up,  shivering  for  very  joy; 
Afar  the  ocean  sleeps;  white  fishing-gulls 
Flit  where  the  strand  is  purple  with  its  tribe 
Of  nested  limpets;  savage  creatures  seek 
Their  loves  in  wood  and  plain,  and  God  renews 
His  ancient  rapture. 

And  then  follows  that  vision  of  the  true  evolution,  which 
it  is  a  shame  to  quote  piecemeal,  but  of  which  some  sen- 
tences at  least  must  be  quoted  here: 

Thus  God  dwells  in  all, 
From  life's  minute  beginnings,  up  at  last 
To  man,  the  consummation  of  this  scheme 
Of  being,  the  completion  of  this  sphere 
Of  life,  whose  attributes  had  here  and  there 
Been  scattered  o'er  the  visible  world  before, 
Asking  to  be  combined,  dim  fragments  meant 
To  be  united  in  some  wondrous  whole, 
Imperfect  qualities  throughout  creation 
Suggesting  some  one  creature  yet  to  make, 
Some  point  where  all  these  scattered  rays  shall  meet 
Convergent  in  the  faculties  or  man. 

Progress  is 

The  law  of  life:  man  is  not  man  as  yet, 
Nor  shall  I  deem  his  general  object  served 
While  only  here  and  there  a  towering  mind 
O'erlooks  his  prostrate  fellows:  when  the  host 
Is  out  at  once  to  the  despair  of  night; 
When  all  mankind  alike  is  perfected, 
Equal  in  full-blown  powers — then,  not  till  then, 
I  say  begins  man's  general  infancy. 

"Paracelsus"  is  a  great  poem,  one  of  the  greatest  in 
English  literature;  and  when  we  read  it  we  cannot  wonder 
that  one  of  the  first  organs  of  literary  opinion  in  England 
does  not  hesitate  to  set  Browning  close  beside  Shakespeare. 

In  sustained  splendor  of  thought  and  imagery,  but  upon 


1 86      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

a  lesser  scale,  "Saul"  is  also  one  of  the  poems  which  men 
will  not  readily  let  die;  and  one  might  class  with  "Saul" 
such  wonderful  studies  as  "A  Death  in  the  Desert"  and 
the  "Epistle  of  Karshish."  In  "Saul"  Browning  has 
attained  the  rare  achievement  of  perfect  form  and  har- 
mony. There  is  a  magnificent  music  in  the  billowy 
cadences  of  "Saul";  it  seems  to  rise  and  fall  not  so  much 
to  the  harp  of  David  as  to  the  melodious  thunder  and 
trumpet-calls  of  some  great  organ  which  floods  the  uni- 
verse with  invisible  delight.  But  such  poems  as  these 
owe  their  true  greatness  to  the  thought  which  informs 
them.  There  is  no  writer  of  our  day,  whether  of  prose 
or  poetry,  who  will  so  well  repay  the  attention  of  the 
theological  student  as  Browning.  He  has  so  vivid  a  vision 
of  invisible  things,  so  intense  a  grasp  on  spiritual  facts, 
that  he  pierces  into  the  heart  of  religious  mystery  as  no 
other  man  of  our  time  has  done,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
rise  from  a  course  of  Browning  without  a  sense  of  added 
or  invigorated  faith.  The  literature  of  Christian  evidence 
has  received,  in  our  time,  no  more  important  contribu- 
tions than  "Easter  Day"  and  "Christmas  Eve,"  the 
"Death  in  the  Desert"  and  the  "Epistle  of  Karshish." 
The  method  is  Browning's  own,  but  it  is  used  with  con- 
summate skill  and  effect;  it  is  a  sword  which  no  other 
man  can  wield  save  the  craftsman  who  forged  it,  but  in 
his  hand  it  pierces  to  the  dividing  asunder  of  the  bone  and 
marrow  of  current  scepticism.  As  poet  and  thinker, 
Browning  secures  a  double  advantage,  and  annexes  realms 
to  his  dominion  which  are  not  often  brought  under  the 
sway  of  a  common  scepter.  The  fashion  of  the  world 
may  change,  and  the  old  doubts  may  wear  themselves  out 
and  sink  like  shadows  out  of  sight  in  the  morning  of  a 


Browning's  Philosophy  of  Life  155 

If  Wordsworth's  was  the  priestly  temperament,  and 
Tennyson's  is  the  artistic,  it  may  be  said  that  Browning's 
was  something  broader  than  both:  the  nobly  human  tem- 
perament, which  cleaves  to  man,  and  seeks  to  understand 
his  hopes  and  fears,  and  judges  him  by  the  standard  of 
a  catholic  charity.  In  this  respect  it  is  no  exaggeration 
to  say  that  Browning  more  nearly  resembles  Shakespeare 
than  any  poet  of  the  last  three  hundred  years;  for  we  can 
imagine  Shakespeare  as  having  moved  among  men  with 
the  same  genial  and  understanding  sympathy,  and  as  inter- 
preting the  men  of  his  day  with  an  insight  similar  to,  if 
broader  and  more  profo'und  than,  Browning's. 

The  immediate  result  of  this  temper  in  Browning  is, 
that  no  poet  has  exhibited  such  variety,  and  this  variety 
springs  from  the  multiplicity  of  subjects  in  which  he  is 
interested.  His  poems  cover  dissertations  on  art  and 
music,  stories  of  adventure,  strangely  vivid  and  exact 
reproductions  of  mediaeval  life  and  thought,  glimpses  of 
the  authentic  life  of  the  ancient  world  not  less  than  of  the 
modern,  yet  all  touched  with  that  precision  which  marks 
the  student  and  the  scholar.  In  the  company  of  Robert 
Browning  you  see  from  the  prosaic  eminence  of  a  London 
common  the  overthrow  of  Sodom,  and  the  dread  vision 
of  the  Last  Judgment,  as  in  the  wonderful  poem  called 
"Easter  Day";  you  sail  in  Venetian  gondolas  witnessing 
the  drama  of  passion  and  crime;  you  hide  with  conspira- 
tors in  the  ruined  aqueducts  of  modern  Italy;  the  scene 
changes  from  the  Ghetto  to  the  Morgue;  from  the  by- 
ways of  London  to  the  deserts  of  Arabia;  from  the  tent 
of  Saul  to  the  plains  of  "glorious  guilty  Babylon";  from 
the  Shambles'  Gate,  where  the  patriot  rides  out  to  death 
upon  his  hurdle,  to  the  splendid  chambers  of  the  connois- 


156      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

seur,  crowded  with  the  spoils  of  Renaissance  art,  where 
the  Bishop  orders  his  tomb  in  St.  Praxed's.  Nothing  in 
the  drama  of  human  life  seems  to  escape  Browning;  its 
minutest  by-play  rivets  his  attention  not  less  than  its 
master  passions.  He  writes,  in  fact,  like  a  citizen  of  the 
world,  with  a  shrewd,  hard,  piercing  intelligence,  which 
goes  straight  to  the  heart  of  things,  touching  them  off 
with  gentle  cynicism,  or  laying  them  bare  with  the  light- 
ning flash  of  inspired  insight.  He  is  essentially  dramatic; 
that  is  to  say,  he  habitually  loses  himself  in  the  individu- 
ality of  the  person  he  represents,  his  main  question  being, 
"Now,  what  did  this  man  think,  that  he  acted  thus?" 
He  frequently  labors  with  minute  care  to  build  up  his  pic- 
ture of  the  man's  condition,  till  we  begin  to  be  impatient 
of  his  patience;  then  suddenly,  with  some  short,  sharp 
flash  of  thought,  the  whole  soul  of  the  man  is  revealed 
as  by  lightning,  and  the  poem  ends.  What,  then,  is 
Browning's  view  of  life?  His  view  of  religion  we  may 
conveniently  leave  for  a  separate  chapter.  Let  us  ask 
now,  What  is  his  view  of  life? 

The  first  and  chief  point  in  Browning's  view  of  life 
is  his  intense  sense  of  the  reality  of  God  and  the  human 

soul. 

He  glows  above 

With  scarce  an  intervention,  presses  close 
And  palpitatingly,  His  soul  o'er  ours. 

These  are  the  twin  Pharos-lights  of  earthly  life;  the  wild 
surge  of  circumstance  breaks  and  darkens  on  all  sides,  but 
these  abide.  It  matters  not  what  is  lost  if  God  be  found, 
or  how  much  is  swept  down  into  the  roaring  wells  of  the 
hungry  sea  of  oblivion  if  the  soul  be  saved. 


Browning's  Philosophy  of  Life  157 

In  man's  self  arise 

August  anticipations,  symbols,  types 
Of  a  dim  splendor  ever  on  before, 
In  that  eternal  circle  life  pursues. 

In  all  moments  of  supreme  passion  and  impulse  we  feel 
how  thin  is  that  veil  which  shuts  us  from  eternity.  The 
lover  in  the  "Last  Ride"  utters  this  thought  when  he 
cries: 

Who  knows  but  the  world  may  end  to-night? 

These  moments  of  exaltation  are  the  true  index  to  the 
greatness  of  the  soul  of  man,  and  therefore  are  to  be 
sought  and  cherished  above  all  other  gain.  What  are 
progress,  science,  knowledge,  love,  art,  in  the  light  of 
these  higher  thoughts?  They  are  simply  so  many  golden 
roads  which  lead  to  God,  so  many  shining  stairs  on  which 
the  half-visible  shapes  of  spiritual  presences  go  up  and 
down.  There  is  a  world  of  spirit  as  of  sense,  and  the 
gleams  of  spiritual  knowledge  which  visit  us 

Were  meant 
To  sting  with  hunger  for  full  light. 

Art  is  not  to  be  praised  for  what  it  achieves,  but  for 
what  it  aspires  to.  It  is  the  yearning  of  the  spirit,  not 
the  skill  of  the  hand,  which  gives  it  its  real  value. 

Progress,  man's  distinctive  mark  alone, 

Not  God's,  and  not  the  beasts';  God  is,  they  are, 

Man  partly  is,  and  wholly  hopes  to  be. 

No  English  poet  has  written  so  fully  upon  art  and 
music,  or  has  shown  more  conclusively  an  exact  knowl- 
edge and  delicate  taste  in  both;  but  no  poet  is  less  of  a 
dilettante.  Art  is  simply  an  aspiration;  when  the  artist 
is  satisfied  with  his  work,  then  he  has  renounced  all  that 


158      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

made  his  art  true  and  worthy.  The  mere  visible  results 
of  art  are  worthless  in  themselves,  and  the  passion  of 
accumulating  them  an  ignoble  passion,  if  it  has  no  higher 
purposes.  Contempt  can  go  no  farther  than  to  picture 
such  a  connoisseur,  who — 

Above  all  epitaphs 
Aspires  to  have  his  tomb  describe 
Himself  as  sole  among  the  tribe 
Of  snuff-box  fanciers  who  possessed 
A  Grignon  with  the  Regent's  crest. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  in  the  pursuit  of  true  art  that 
Abt  Vogler  gets  his  vision  of  truth  itself,  and  cries: 

All  we  have  willed  and  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good  shall  exist, 

Not  in  semblance,  but  in  itself;  no  beauty,  nor  good,  nor  power 
Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives  for  the  melodist, 

When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour. 
The  high  that  proved  too  high,  the  heroic  for  earth  too  hard, 

The  passion  that  left  the  ground  to  lose  itself  in  the  sky, 
Are  music  sent  up  to  God  by  the  lover  and  the  bard. 

Enough  that  He  heard  it  once;  we  shall  hear  it  by  and  by. 

Upon  the  general  text  of  this  view  of  life  Browning 
perpetually  engrafts  other  lessons.  For  instance,  he  is 
fond  of  showing  that  it  is  better  and  grander  to  fail  in 
great  things  than  to  succeed  in  little  ones.  What  though 
the  patriot  goes  out  at  the  Shambles'  Gate,  remember- 
ing, as  he  rides,  the  flags  flung  wide  for  him  a  year 
before? 

Thus  I  entered,  and  thus  I  go! 

In  triumphs  people  have  dropped  down  dead. 
"  Paid  by  the  World — what  dost  thou  owe 

Me?"  God  might  question;  now  instead 
'Tis  God  shall  repay!     I  am  safer  so. 


Browning's  Philosophy  of  Life  159 

So  again,  in  the  "Grammarian's  Funeral,"  Browning 
puts  into  four  terse  and  epigrammatic  lines  the  same  truth: 

This  low  man  seeks  a  little  thing  to  do, 

Sees  it  and  does  it; 
This  high  man,  with  a  great  thing  to  pursue, 

Dies  ere  he  knows  it. 

A  point  which  Browning  is  never  weary  of  illustrating 
is,  that  to  all  men  there  come  moments  of  half-inspired 
insight,  the  keen  and  perhaps  momentary  thrill  of  great 
impulses,  and  that  a  man's  whole  eternity  hangs  upon  the 
use  of  such  visitations.  The  revelation  may  be  made  in 
human  love;  it  may  be  a  vision  of  knowledge  or  of  duty; 
but  it  is  imperative  that  when  such  transfiguring  moments 
come  we  should  be  ready  to  seize  them.  In  such  divine 
moments  we  see  the  narrow  way  that  leads  to  life  eternal. 

There  are  flashes  struck  from  midnights, 

There  are  fire-flames  noondays  kindle, 
Whereby  piled-up  honors  perish, 

Whereby  swoln  ambitions  dwindle; 
While  just  this  or  that  poor  impulse, 

Which  for  once  had  play  unstifled, 
Seems  the  whole  work  of  a  lifetime, 

That  away  the  rest  has  trifled. 

What  if  it  be  said  such  moments  are  transient,  that 
ecstasy  is  rare,  that  such  high  visions  fade  as  soon  as 
born?  The  vision  may  perish,  but  the  lesson  it  reveals 
remains.  Life  which  is  not  vivified  by  faith  and  emotion 
is  scarcely  life  at  all.  The  worst  of  all  woes  is  worldli- 
ness;  to  sink  down  in  tranquil  acquiescence  before  the 
customs  of  a  low-pitched  life,  and  never  to  break  through 
into  that  eternal  world  which  invests  the  visible  world  like 
an  invisible  atmosphere — this  is  spiritual  death,  and  there 


160      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

is  no  death  to  be  feared  but  that.     Why,  the  very  grass- 
hopper 

Spends  itself  in  leaps  all  day 
To  reach  the  sun,  you  want  the  eyes 
To  see,  as  they  the  wings  to  rise 

And  match  the  noble  hearts  of  them. 

Would  the  grasshopper,  with  his  "passionate  life," 
change  estate  with  the  mole  that  gropes  in  his  "veritable 
muck"?  Thus  the  vision  of  life  which  shapes  itself  to 
Browning  is  the  vision  of  a  great  world  in  which  the  spirit- 
ual is  ever  in  peril  of  being  throttled  by  the  sordid. 

The  general  issue  of  Browning's  philosophy  of  life  is, 
then,  that  life  is  probation  and  education.  Nothing  is  of 
value  in  itself  but  for  what  it  leads  to,  for  the  help  that  it 
may  yield  the  spirit  in  its  long  battle  to  gain  enfranchise- 
ment from  the  flesh,  and  inheritance  with  God.  Just  as 
the  utmost  spoil  of  knowledge  only  serves  to  sting  us  with 
hunger  for  fuller  light,  so  the  utmost  wealth  of  love  only 
reveals  to  us  the  infinite  possibilities  of  the  love  of  God. 
There  is  "no  pause  in  the  leading  and  the  light": 

There's  heaven  above,  and  night  by  night 
I  look  right  through  its  gorgeous  roof; 
For  I  intend  to  get  to  God. 

Life  has  manifold  sweet  and  pleasant  uses;  let  the 
odor  of  the  April,  and  the  freshness  of  the  sea,  the  miracle 
of  science,  the  ineffable  yearning  of  perfect  music,  or  the 
spell  of  perfect  art,  find  their  just  and  proper  place  in  the 
category  of  life,  and  be  accepted  with  no  ascetic  scruple, 
but  genial  gratitude.  But  they  are  nothing  more  than 
broken  hints,  by  which  men  learn  the  alphabet  of  better 
life.  And  it  is  because  to  rest  in  these  things  is  death 
that  Browning  so  eagerly  applauds  any  life  that  flings 


Browning's  Philosophy  of  Life  161 

itself  away  in  endeavors  after  the  distant  and  unattainable, 
and  is  at  all  times  so  merciful  toward  earthly  failure.  He 
loves  to  show  us  that  beneath  the  rough  husk  of  lives 
which  seem  wasted,  there  lies  hidden  the  true  seed  of  a 
life  which  will  one  day  bloom  consummate  in  beauty.  He 
loves  equally  to  take  up  some  apparently  successful  life, 
and  pierce  it  with  his  caustic  humor,  and  point  out  its 
essential  emptiness  with  an  irony  so  keen  and  stern  that 
it  would  be  bitter  were  it  not  softened  by  the  pathos  of  a 
human-hearted  pity.  Above  all,  there  is  no  touch  of 
pessimism  in  him:  he  looks  undismayed  above  present 
evils  to  the  brightening  of  a  diviner  day.  He  says,  with 
Abt  Vogler: 

Therefore,  to  whom  turn  I,  but  to  Thee,  the  ineffable  Name? 
Builder  and  Maker,  Thou,  of  houses  not  made  with  hands! 
What,  have  fear  of  change  from  Thee,  who  art  ever  the  same? 
Doubt  that  Thy  power  can  fill  the  heart  that  Thy  power 

expands? 
There  shall  never  be  one  lost  good!     What  was,  shall  live  as 

before. 

The  evil  is  null,  is  nought,  is  silence  implying  sound; 
On  the  earth,  the  broken  arcs;  in  the  heaven  a  perfect  round. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  circumstances  of  Browning's  life  were  in  marked 
contrast  with  those  of  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson? 

2.  In  what  respect  is  Browning  unique  among  modern  poets? 

3.  What  great  variety  of  subjects  are  treated  in  Browning's 
poetry? 

4.  What  is  the  first  great  point  to  be  noted  in  Browning's 
view  of  life? 

5.  What  is  his  general  view  of  art? 

6.  How  are  his  views  brought  out  in  his  pictures  of  the 
"connoisseur"  and  of  "Abt  Vogler"? 


1 62      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

7.  What  lesson  does  he  teach  in  his  poem  of  "  The  Patriot "? 

8.  What  other  great  experience  in  human  life  is  he  fond  of 
illustrating? 

9.  What  in  general  is  his  view  of  the  meaning  of  life? 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Essays  on  Robert  Browning's  Poetry,    J.  T.  Nettleship. 
Poets  and  Problems.     George  Willis  Cooke. 
Literary  Studies.    Vol.  II.     (Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  and 
Browning.)     Walter  Bagehot. 

Studies  in  Literature.    Edward  Dowden. 
The  Victorian  Poets.    E.  C.  Stedman. 


CHAPTER    XV 
THE  SPIRIT  OF  BROWNING'S  RELIGION 

Having  said  so  much  as  I  have  about  Browning's 
intense  interest  in  life,  it  naturally  follows  that  something 
should  be  said  about  his  attitude  to  religion,  and  the  spirit 
of  his  religious  teaching.  The  great  poet  is  necessarily  a 
great  believer.  The  faculty  which  pierces  to  the  unseen, 
and  works  in  constant  delicate  contact  with  the  invisible, 
is  a  faculty  absolutely  necessary  to  the  equipment  of  a 
true  poet.  The  poetry  of  faithfulness  is  an  abnormal 
growth.  It  has  little  range  or  vitality.  It  never  attains 
to  really  high  and  memorable  results.  When  the  spring 
of  faith  is  broken,  every  faculty  of  the  mind  seems  to 
share  in  the  vast  disaster.  And  especially  do  the  facul- 
ties of  imagination,  spiritual  insight,  and  tender  fancy, 
which  are  the  master  architects  of  poetry,  suffer.  The 
loss  of  faith  strikes  a  chill  to  the  central  core  of  being,  and 
robs  the  artist  of  more  than  half  the  material  from  which 
the  highest  poetry  is  woven. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  power  of  spiritual  apprehension 
is  one  of  the  surest  signs  whereby  we  know  a  great  poet. 
It  is  the  function  of  the  great  poet  to  be  a  seer  and  inter- 
preter. He  sees  farther,  deeper,  and  higher  than  ordi- 
nary men,  and  interprets  for  the  common  man  what  he 
dimly  feels,  but  does  not  fully  apprehend.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  the  message  of  the  poet,  the  result  of  his 
spiritual  insight,  may  not  shape  with  our  preconceived 

163 


164      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

notions  and  theories;  but  where  the  spiritual  insight  is 
sure  and  real,  the  true  poet  never  fails  to  quicken  insight 
in  his  reader.  Perhaps  no  man  has  done  more  in  our 
generation  to  quicken  and  sharpen  the  spiritual  insight  of 
men  than  Browning.  Pre-eminently  he  is  a  religious  poet. 
Religion  enters  into  all  his  work,  like  a  fragrance  or  a 
color  which  clings  to  some  delicate  and  lovely  fabric,  and 
while  occasionally  subdued  or  modified,  is  never  lost. 
Browning's  vast  knowledge  of  the  world  never  degener- 
ates into  worldliness.  He  seeks  to  know  the  world  in  all 
its  aspects,  all  its  strange  and  vague  contradictions,  and 
seeks  rather  than  shuns  its  sad  and  seamy  side.  If  he  is 
an  optimist,  it  is  not  because  he  is  an  idealist,  and  the 
most  striking  thing  about  his  optimism  is,  that  it  thrives  in 
the  full  knowledge  of  the  baseness  and  evil  of  the  world. 
But  the  curiosity  which  impels  Browning  to  investigate  the 
darker  side  of  life  is  never  altogether  an  artistic  curiosity: 
it  is  a  religious  curiosity.  What,  then,  is  the  net  result? 
What  are  the  great  facts  on  which  he  builds  his  faith? 
What  are  the  sources  of  the  religious  buoyancy  which  is 
so  remarkable  in  so  thorough  a  citizen  of  the  world,  and 
especially  in  an  age  when  so  many  of  the  foremost  writers 
and  thinkers  have  given  themselves  over  to  agnosticism  or 
despair? 

Now,  the  actual  religion  of  a  man  can  usually  be 
reduced  to  a  few  simple  truths  which  are  grasped  with 
entire  belief,  and  thus  become  the  working  principles  of 
his  life.  Few  men  believe  with  equal  conviction  all  the 
various  dogmas  of  religious  truth;  but  while  many  may 
remain  obscure,  there  are  others  which  are  revealed  with 
a  vividness  of  light  and  force  which  constitute  them  hence- 
forth the  pillars  of  a  man's  real  life.  Thus,  for  instance, 


The  Spirit  of  Browning's  Religion        165 

St.  James  has  defined  what  pure  religion  and  undefiled 
meant  to  him  in  one  simple  and  sufficing  formula — charity 
and  unworldliness,  visiting  the  fatherless,  and  keeping  the 
soul  unspotted  from  the  world.  So  Browning  has  grasped, 
with  all  his  force,  certain  religious  truths  which  appear  to 
him  the  soul  and  marrow  of  Christianity,  and  these  consti- 
tute the  spirit  of  his  religion. 

The  best  illustration  of  the  working  of  Browning's 
genius  in  the  realm  of  religious  truth  may  be  found  in 
such  a  poem  as  "Easter  Day."  This  poem  is  a  wonder- 
ful poem  in  more  respects  than  one:  it  is  wonderful  in  its 
imagery,  its  intensity  of  insight,  its  daring,  its  vividness, 
the  closeness  of  its  reasoning,  the  sustained  splendor  of 
its  diction,  the  prophetic  force  of  its  conclusions.  It 
begins  with  the  discussion  of  two  speakers,  who  agree 
"How  very  hard  it  is  to  be  a  Christian."  But  each 
speaker  utters  the  phrase  in  a  different  sense:  the  one 
finds  Christianity  hard  as  a  matter  of  faith,  unproved  to 
the  intellect;  the  other,  as  a  matter  of  practice,  unrealized 
in  the  life.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to  be  a  martyr,  and 
find  a  Hand  plunged  through  the  flame  to  pluck  the  soul 
up  to  God,  if  indeed  one  could  be  certain  of  any  such 
result;  it  is  hard  to  believe  on  less  than  scientific  evidence. 
To  renounce  the  world  on  such  evidence  as  we  have  would 
be  folly.  Suppose,  after  such  renunciation,  a  man  found 
he  had  given  up  the  only  world  there  was  for  him?  Then 
ensues  the  poem  itself,  which  consists  of  the  description 
of  a  vision  of  the  final  judgment  which  the  man  of  faith 
received,  and  which  shook  him  out  of  the  very  web  of 
negation  in  which  his  friend  struggles.  Suddenly,  as  he 
crossed  a  common  at  midnight,  occupied  with  these  very 
thoughts,  all  the  midnight  became  "one  fire."  There 


1 66      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

shot  across  the  dome  of  heaven,  "like  horror  and  astonish- 
ment, ' ' 

A  fierce  vindictive  scribble  of  red, 
And  straight  I  was  aware 

That  the  whole  rib-work  round,  minute 

Cloud  touching  cloud  beyond  compute 

Was  tinted,  each  with  its  own  spot 

Of  burning  at  the  core,  till  clot 

Jammed  against  clot,  and  spilt  its  fire 

Over  all  heaven. 

This  awful  vision  burned  away  all  darkness  from  his 
spirit,  and  he  knew  that  he  had  chosen,  not  God,  but  the 
World.  Instantly  he  resolved  to  defend  and  applaud  his 
choice.  God  had  created  him  to  appreciate  the  beauties 
of  life,  and  he  had  not  put  aside  the  boon  unused — that 
was  all.  But  at  that  instant  there  came  a  final  belch  of 

fire,  and  he  saw  God — 

Like  the  smoke 

Pillared  o'er  Sodom  when  day  broke — 
I  saw  him. 

Then  God  spoke.  He  had  chosen  the  world;  let  him 
glut  his  sense  upon  the  world,  but  remember  he  was  shut 
out  from  the  heaven  of  spirit.  But  what  was  the  world, 
with  all  its  brave  show  of  beauty?  Merely  one  rose  of 
God's  making,  flung 

Out  of  a  summer's  opulence, 
Over  the  Eden  barrier,  whence 
Thou  art  excluded. 

Well,  then,  he  would  choose  art,  to  which  the  voice  of 
God  replies  yet  more  sternly  that  art  is  less  than  nature; 
and  its  highest  trophies  the  shame  and  despair  of  artists, 
who  sought  therein  to  express  the  invisible  whole  of  which 
they  perceived  but  a  part.  Then  he  will  choose  mind, 


The  Spirit  of  Browning's  Religion        167 

the  joys  of  intellect;  but  what  again,  replies  the  Judge,  is 
mind  but  a  gleam  which  to  the  devout  thinker 

Makes  bright  the  earth  an  age — 
Now,  the  whole  sun's  his  heritage! 

Lastly,  he  perceives  there  is  nothing  left  but  love,  and 
that  shall  be  his  choice. 

God  is:  thou  art — the  rest  is  hurled 
To  nothingness. 

He  has  doubted  the  story  of  Christ  because  he  could 
not  conceive  so  great  love  in  God — 

Upon  the  ground 
That  in  the  story  had  been  found 
Too  much  love!    How  could  God  love  so? 
He,  who  in  all  His  works  below, 
Adapted  to  the  needs  of  man, 
Made  love  the  basis  of  His  plan, 
Did  love,  as  was  demonstrated. 

In  that  moment  he  saw  that  God's  love  was  the  solu- 
tion of  all  intellectual  difficulties,  and  then,  as  he  lay  prone 
and  overwhelmed, 

The  whole  God  within  his  eyes 
Embraced  me. 

So  the  poem  ends — a  vision  of  divine,  unalterable  love 
as  the  solution  of  the  mystery  of  the  universe. 

The  infinite  issue  of  human  choice  is,  again,  one  of 
those  strong  beliefs  which  with  Browning  form  the  spirit 
of  his  religion.  He  reiterates  persistently  and  in  many 
forms  that  any  choice  which  falls  short  of  God  is  ruinous 
in  its  sequence.  For  instance,  the  speaker  in  "Easter 
Day"  is  taught  the  folly  of  choosing  mind  by  perceiving 
that  the  highest  genius  of  man  is  but  a  gleam  from  the 


1 68      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

unexhausted  sun  which  pours  light  through  an  eternal 
world.  But  Browning,  in  one  of  his  greatest  poems, 
"Paracelsus,"  has  gone  much  farther  than  this.  In  that 
poem  he  has  shown  that  intellect  without  love,  without 
morality,  without  character,  is  of  all  forces  the  most  peril- 
ous. Paracelsus  has  sought  to  know.  What  has  his 
desire  brought  him  but  bitterness  and  disappointment? 
So  poignant  is  his  sense  of  failure  that  he  even  cries: 

Mind  is  nothing  but  disease, 
And  natural  health  is  ignorance. 

And  in  the  final  pathetic  scene  he  derides  the  folly  of  such 
intellectual  passions  as  those  which  have  consumed  him, 
and  sees  clearly  that  to  love  is  better  than  to  know. 

No,  no; 

Love,  hope,  fear,  faith — these  make  humanity; 
These  are  its  sign  and  note  and  character, 
And  these  I  have  lost. 

Indeed,  throughout  his  writings  Browning  shows  him- 
self inexorably  opposed  to  the  modern  theistic  philosophy 
which  makes  the  individual  the  center  of  the  universe,  and 
steadily  teaches  the  more  ancient  doctrine  of  Him  who, 
being  rich,  for  our  sakes  became  poor,  that  we,  by  His 
poverty,  might  become  rich — 

Renounce  joy  for  my  fellow's  sake?     That's  joy 
Beyond  joy. 

But  this  all-present  sense  of  God's  love  implies  also 
such  truths  as  communion,  prayer,  providence;  and  these 
also  are  incorporated  in  Browning's  religion.  The  noblest 
example  of  Browning's  expression  of  these  doctrines  is 
found  in  the  short  but  splendid  poem,  "Instans  Tyran- 
nus."  It  is  the  tyrant  who  speaks.  Out  of  the  million 


The  Spirit  of  Browning's  Religion        169 

or  two  of  men  he  possesses  there  is  one  man  not  at  all  to 
his  mind.  He  struck  him,  of  course,  but  though  pinned 
to  the  earth  with  the  persistence  of  so  great  a  hate,  he 
neither  moaned  nor  cursed.  He  is  nothing  but  a  toad  or 
rat,  but  nevertheless  the  tyrant  cannot  eat  in  peace  while 
he  lives  to  anger  him  with  his  abominable  meekness.  So 
he  soberly  lays  his  last  plan  to  extinguish  the  man — 

When  sudden  .  .  .  how  think  ye?  the  end 

Did  I  say  "without  friend"? 

Say,  rather,  from  marge  to  blue  marge, 

The  whole  sky  grew  his  targe, 

With  the  sun's  self  for  visible  boss, 

While  an  arm  ran  across! 

Do  you  see?     Just  my  vengeance  complete, 

The  man  sprang  to  his  feet, 

Stood  erect,  caught  at  God's  skirts,  and  prayed! 

— So /was  afraid? 

The  poem  is  a  sort  of  magnificent  version  of  the  familiar 
hymn-lines: 

Strong  to  deliver,  and  good  to  redeem 

The  weakest  believer  who  hangs  upon  Him. 

The  center  of  Browning's  whole  world  of  religious 
thought  lies  in  his  abiding  sense  and  conviction  that  God 
is  love.  It  reconciles  him  to  the  mysteries  of  faith,  it 
casts  a  bright  bridge  of  gleaming  hope  across  the  pro- 
found gulfs  of  human  error,  and  like  the  lunar  rainbow  he 
describes,  a  second  and  mightier  bow  springs  from  the 
first,  and  stands  vast  and  steady  above  the  mysterious 
portals  of  human  destiny,  on  whose  straining  topmost  arc 
he  sees  emerge  the  foot  of  God  himself.  "God  is  good, 
God  is  wise,  God  is  love,"  is  the  perpetual  whisper  of 
spiritual  voices,  floating  over  him,  and  piercing  with  their 


i  jo      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

divine  sweetness  the  evil  darkness  of  the  tortuous  way  he 
threads  in  tracking  out  the  strange  secrets  of  human 
impulse  and  achievement.  All  knowledge  is  but  the 
shadow  of  God's  light;  all  purity  and  constancy  of  human 
passion  but  the  hint  of  His  love;  all  beauty  but  the  fitful 
gleam  of  His  raiment  as  He  passes  us — that  King  in  His 
beauty  whose  very  face  itself  we  shall  at  last  behold  in  the 
land  that  is  very  far  off.  If  Browning  stands  amid  the 
ruins  of  that  mighty  city,  which  in  a  single  year  sent  its 
million  fighters  forth,  and 

Marks  the  basement  whence  a  tower  in  ancient  time 

Sprang  sublime, 
And  a  burning  ring,  all  round,  the  chariots  traced 

As  they  raced, 

it  is  to  turn  at  last  from  the  vision  of  that  domed  and 
daring  palace,  the  splendid  spectacle  of  power  and  pomp, 

to  cry: 

Shut  them  in, 

With  their  triumphs,  and  their  glories,  and  the  rest; 
Love  is  best! 

If  he  considers  the  failing  of  human  power  in  the  pres- 
ence of  death,  it  is  only  to  exclaim,  in  his  "Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra,"  with  a  sense  of  triumphant  gladness: 
Grow  old  along  with  me! 
The  best  is  yet  to  be, 

The  last  of  life  for  which  the  first  was  made; 
Our  times  are  in  His  hand, 
Who  saith:  "A  whole  I  planned, 
Youth  shows  but  half;  trust  God;  see  all,  nor  be  afraid!" 

He  has  infinite  faith  in  God,  that  His  love  will,  in  ways 
unknown  to  us,  work  out  ultimate  blessedness  for  His 
children,  and  that  the  world  will  not  pass  out  in  darkness, 
but  in  the  end  of  the  ages  it  will  be  daybreak  everywhere. 


Robert  Browning — Concluding  Survey      187 

stronger  faith;  but  even  so  the  world  will  still  turn  to  the 
finer  poems  of  Browning  for  intellectual  stimulus,  for  the 
purification  of  pity  and  of  pathos,  for  the  exaltation  of 
hope,  and  will  revere  him  who,  in  the  night  of  the  world's 
doubt,  still  sang: 

This  world's  no  blot  for  us, 

Nor  blank — it  means  intensely  and  means  good, 

To  find  its  meaning  is  my  meat  and  drink. 


Since  these  criticisms  were  written,  Robert  Browning 
has  passed  away.  He  retained  to  the  last  his  genial  faith, 
his  resolute  optimism,  his  intellectual  vigor  and  subtlety. 
The  last  poem  of  his  last  volume  is  a  sort  of  summing  up 
of  himself  and  his  life-work:  nor  could  a  more  discerning 
summary  be  found  than  in  the  words: 

One  who  never  turned  his  back,  but  marched  breast  forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never  dreamed, though  right  were  worsted,  wrong  would  triumph, 

Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  How  have  the  problems  of  the  nineteenth  century  affected 
the  faith  of  many  of  its  thinking  men? 

2.  What  is  Browning's  teaching  with  regard  to  Christ? 

3.  In  what  spirit  does  he  approach  the  doubts  of  men? 

4.  What  does  he  teach  as  to  our  constantly  receding  ideals? 

5.  How  does  Browning  deal  with  the  tangled  problems  of 
human  conduct? 

6.  What  is  the  story  of  "The  Ring  and  the  Book"? 

7.  What  remarkable  vision  of  evolution  is  found  in  the  con- 
cluding pages  of  Paracelsus? 


1 88      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

8.  What  famous  poems  of  Browning  are  peculiarly  Christian 
in  their  character? 

9.  Quote  the  stanza  from  Browning's  last  poem  which  sums 
up  his  own  life. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Browning's  Message  to  His  Time.     Edward  Berdoe. 

Records  of  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  and  Browning.  Anne  Thack- 
eray Ritchie. 

Browning  Encyclopedia.     Edward  Berdoe. 

Browning's  Complete  Works,  in  one  volume,  with  notes. 
Cambridge  Edition,  $3.00. 

The  Camberwell  Edition,  in  twelve  small  volumes,  with 
notes,  7$c  each,  sold  singly. 

There  are  many  excellent  small  volumes  of  selected  poems. 


CHAPTER    XVII 
THOMAS  CARLYLE 

Born  at  Ecclefechan,  December  4,  1795.  Entered  Edinburgh 
University,  1809.  Published  Life  of  Schiller,  1825.  Married 
Jane  Welsh,  October,  1826.  Contributed  to  Edinburgh 
Review,  Westminster,  Foreign  Quarterly,  etc.,  1828-1833, 
when  Sartor  Resartus  was  published  in  Eraser's  Magazine, 
French  Revolution,  1837.  Past  and  Present,  1843.  Latter- 
Day  Pamphlets,  1850.  Cromwell's  Letters  and  Speeches, 
1845.  History  of  Frederick  the  Great,  begun  1858,  com- 
pleted 1865.  Elected  Lord  Rector  of  Edinburgh  University, 
1865.  Died  at  5  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea,  February  5,  1881. 

Taking  him  for  all  in  all,  Thomas  Carlyle  is  the  most 
representative  and  by  far  the  greatest  man  of  genius  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  The  four  notes  of  genius  are 
originality,  fertility,  coherence,  and  articulation.  He  is 
so  far  original  in  style  and  method  that  there  is  no  one 
with  whom  we  can  justly  compare  him.  He  followed  no 
master,  and  acknowledged  none;  his  angle  of  vision  on 
all  questions  was  his  own,  and  what  he  saw  he  expressed 
in  a  fashion  which  decorous  literary  persons  of  the  old 
order  felt  to  be  dazzlingly  perverse,  startling,  eruptive,  and 
even  outrageous.  His  mind  was  also  one  of  the  most 
fertile  of  minds;  not  so  much  in  the  matter  of  industrious 
production  as  in  the  much  rarer  function  of  begetting 
great  seminal  ideas,  which  reproduced  themselves  over  the 
entire  area  of  modern  literature.  Coherence  marks  these 
ideas,  for  the  main  principles  of  his  philosophy  are  so 

189 


190      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

simple  and  so  definite,  that  from  his  earliest  writings  to 
his  last  there  is  perfect  unity.  Lastly,  in  the  matter  of 
articulation  or  expression,  he  is  supreme.  He  enlarged 
the  potentialities  of  language,  as  every  great  literary  artist 
does,  and  in  precision,  splendor,  and  suggestiveness  of 
phrase  stands  unapproached. 

But  Carlyle  was  much  more  even  than  a  great  man  of 
genius,  or  a  great  writer.  He  never  conceived  himself, 
nor  did  any  one  who  knew  him  intimately  conceive  him, 
as  having  found  a  sufficing  expression  of  himself  in  his 
writings.  He  knew  himself,  and  was  felt  by  others,  to  be 
a  great  spiritual  force.  Criticism  has  had  much  to  say 
upon  the  strangeness  and  mass  of  his  genius;  it  has  hardly 
"yet  apprehended  aright  his  prophetic  force.  That  he 
brought  into  English  literature  much  that  is  startling  and 
brilliant  in  style  is  the  least  part  of  the  matter;  he  brought 
also  a  flaming  vehemence  of  thought,  passion,  and  convic- 
tion, which  is  unique.  Goethe,  with  his  piercing  insight, 
was  the  first  to  recognize  the  true  nature  of  the  man.  He 
discovered  Carlyle  long  before  England  had  heard  of  him, 
when  he  was  simply  an  unknown  and  eccentric  young 
Scotsman,  who  found  astonishing  difficulty  in  earning  daily 
bread.  The  great  German  incontinently  brushed  aside,  as 
of  relative  unimportance,  all  questions  about  his  genius,  and 
touched  the  true  core  of  the  man  and  his  message,  when  he 
said  that  Carlyle  was  "a  new  moral  force,  the  extent  and 
effects  of  which  it  is  impossible  to  predict."  In  other  words, 
Goethe  recognized  the  main  fact  about  him,  which  was  that 
by  nature,  temperament,  and  vocation  he  was  a  prophet. 

If  Carlyle  had  been  asked  to  state  what  he  understood 
by  the  word  "prophet,"  he  would  have  laid  emphasis  upon 
two  things:  clearness  and  vividness  of  vision  in  the  appre- 


Thomas  Carlyle  191 

hension  of  truth,  and  resolute  sincerity  in  acting  on  it. 
Carlyle  held  that  there  is  within  every  man  something 
akin  to  the  Daemon  of  Socrates — intuition,  spiritual  appre- 
hension, a  living  monitor  and  guide;  and  that  the  man 
who  obeys  this  inward  voice  knows  by  a  species  of  celes- 
tial divination  where  his  path  lies,  and  what  his  true  work 
is.  In  nothing  does  the  essentially  prophetic  nature  of 
Carlyle  appear  more  plainly  than  in  these  qualities.  Dur- 
ing the  first  forty  years  of  his  life — forty  years  spent  in 
the  desert  of  the  sorest  discipline  a  man  could  suffer — 
there  was  no  moment  when  he  might  not  have  instantly 
improved  his  position  by  a  little  judicious  compromise. 
But  all  compromise  he  regarded  with  scornful  anger.  He 
might  have  entered  the  church,  and  his  spiritual  gifts  were 
vastly  in  excess  of  those  of  thousands  who  find  in  the  pul- 
pit an  honorable  opportunity  of  utterance.  He  might 
have  obtained  a  professorship  in  one  or  other  of  the  Scotch 
seats  of  learning,  if  he  had  cared  to  trim  his  course  to 
suit  the  winds  and  tides  of  the  ordinary  conventions.  He 
might  at  any  moment  have  earned  an  excellent  competence 
by  his  pen,  if  he  had  consented  to  modify  the  ruggedness 
of  his  style  and  the  violence  of  his  opinions  to  the  stan- 
dards of  the  review  editors  and  their  readers.  But  in 
either  of  these  courses  he  recognized  a  fatal  peril  to  his 
sincerity.  Poor  as  he  was,  he  would  not  budge  an  inch. 
He  was  fastidious  to  what  seemed  to  men  like  Jeffrey  an 
absolutely  absurd  degree  over  the  honor  of  his  indepen- 
dence. He  would  make  no  hair's-breadth  advance  to  meet 
the  world;  the  world  must  come  over  to  him,  bag  and 
baggage.  He  acted  with  implicit  obedience  on  his  intu- 
ition. He  had  the  prophet's  stern  simplicity  of  habit. 
He  cared  nothing  for  comfort  or  success;  and  when  at 


192      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

last  success  came,  his  Spartan  simplicity  of  life  suffered 
no  change.  If  ever  man  in  modern  days  knew  what  the 
burden  of  prophecy  meant,  what  it  is  to  be  impelled  to 
utterance  by  an  imperious  instinct  for  truth,  and  to  be 
straitened  in  spirit  till  the  message  was  spoken,  that  man 
was  Carlyle.  It  was  in  this  respect  that  he  differed  as 
much  from  the  ordinary  man  of  letters  as  Isaiah  in  his 
most  impassioned  moments  from  the  common  sermon- 
writer.  The  pulpit,  the  bar,  the  professor's  chair,  were 
not  for  him;  therefore  he  seized  upon  pen  and  paper  as 
the  only  means  left  of  uttering  himself  to  his  age.  He 
was  perfectly  sincere  in  despising  even  this  as  a  medium 
for  his  spiritual  activities.  He  despised  writing  as  a  pro- 
fession, because  he  found  that  when  men  began  to  write 
for  bread  they  became  poor  creatures,  and  if  they  had  any 
real  message  in  them  they  stifled  it  to  win  praise  or  money. 
To  both  praise  and  money  he  was  contemptuously  in- 
different. His  only  passion  was  a  passion  for  truth,  and 
to  speak  this  with  the  least  possible  of  those  literary  flour- 
ishes which  capture  popularity  was  his  meat  and  drink. 

Further  than  this,  Carlyle  was  both  poet  and  humor- 
ist. He  could  not  indeed  write  verse.  He  was  never 
able  to  master  the  technicalities  of  the  art  of  meter.  He 
was  as  little  able  to  write  a  novel,  which  next  to  verse 
affords  a  medium  for  the  man  of  constructive  poetic 
genius.  He  tried  both  arts,  with  rare  and  partial  success 
in  the  first,  and  abject  failure  in  the  second.  Goethe, 
who  is  the  only  man  who  could  be  spoken  of  even  in  a 
partial  sense  as  Carlyle's  master,  had  a  serene  equipoise 
of  faculty,  a  fine  and  supreme  artistic  sense,  which  enabled 
him  to  succeed  equally  in  poetry,  drama,  fiction,  or  phil- 
osophy. Carlyle's  genius  was  as  remarkable  as  Goethe's, 


Thomas  Carlyle  193 

but  its  powers  lay  apart  in  streaming  fire-masses,  nebu- 
lous and  chaotic,  and  were  not  co-ordinated  into  perfect 
harmony  by  that  aesthetic  sense  which  was  Goethe's  high- 
est gift.  But  fundamentally  he  was  a  poet,  and  among 
the  greatest  of  poets.  He  saw  everything  through  the 
medium  of  an  intense  and  searching  imagination.  No 
one  could  describe  the  impression  which  his  French 
Revolution  produces  on  the  mind  better  than  he  himself 
has  done,  when  he  says:  "Nor  do  I  mean  to  investigate 
much  more  about  it,  but  to  splash  down  what  I  know  in 
large  masses  of  colors,  that  it  may  look  like  a  smoke  and 
flame  conflagration  in  the  distance,  which  it  is."  He 
cannot  even  walk  in  Regent  Street  without  exclaiming, 
"To  me,  through  these  thin  cobwebs,  death  and  eternity 
sate  glaring."  All  his  personal  sensations  are  magnified 
into  the  same  gigantic  proportions,  now  lurid,  now  gro- 
tesque, by  the  same  atmosphere  of  imagination  through 
which  they  are  perceived.  His  sensitiveness  is  extreme, 
poignant,  even  terrible.  When  he  talks  of  immensities 
and  eternities,  he  uses  no  mere  stock  phrases;  he  hears 
the  rushing  of  the  fire-streams,  and  the  rolling  worlds 
overhead,  as  he  hears  the  dark  streams  flowing  under  foot, 
bearing  man  and  all  his  brave  arrays  down  to  "Tartarus, 
and  the  pale  kingdoms  of  Dis."  When  he  speaks  of  him- 
self as  feeling  "spectral,"  he  simply  expresses  that  sense 
of  spiritual  loneliness,  detachment,  and  mystery  out  of 
which  the  deepest  poetry  of  the  world  has  come.  To 
judge  such  a  man  by  ordinary  prosaic  standards  is  impos- 
sible. He  is  of  imagination  all  compact,  and  his  writings 
can  only  be  rightly  regarded  as  the  work  of  a  poet  who 
has  the  true  spirit  of  the  seer,  but  is  incapable  of  the 
orthodox  forms  of  poetry. 


194      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

It  is  perhaps  even  more  essential  to  remember  that 
Carlyle  was  a  humorist  of  the  first  order.  On  the  one 
side  of  his  genius  he  approaches  Burns;  on  the  other, 
Swift.  He  shares  with  Burns  a  rugged  independence  of 
nature,  native  pride,  a  sense  of  the  elemental  in  human 
life,  a  power  of  poignant  realism,  a  rare  depth  and  delicacy 
of  sentiment;  he  shares  also  with  him  the  rollicking, 
broad,  not  always  decorous  humor  of  the  Olympian  peas- 
ant, racy  of  the  soil,  half-grim,  half-boisterous,  of  which 
Burns  has  given  imperishable  examples  in  "Tarn  o' 
Shanter"  and  "Holy  Willie's  Prayer."  But  there  was 
also  mingled  in  Carlyle's  humor  a  strain  of  something 
darker  and  more  subtle,  akin  to  the  saturnine  humor  of 
Swift.  He  has  much  of  that  intense  and  scathing  scorn, 
that  sardonic  and  bitter  penetration,  which  made,  and  still 
preserves,  the  name  of  Swift  as  a  name  of  terror.  To  be 
sure,  we  do  not  find  that  depth  of  silent  ferocity  in  Carlyle 
which  alarms  and  appals  us  in  Swift.  Swift  often  thought 
and  wrote  like  a  mere  savage,  smarting  with  the  torture  of 
some  lacerating,  cureless  pain.  He  is  at  heart  a  hater  of 
his  kind,  who  spits  in  the  face  of  its  most  familiar  nobili- 
ties, out  of  mere  exasperated  truculence.  There  is  some- 
thing abominable  and  insane  in  the  humor  of  Swift,  with 
only  a  rare  touch  of  redeeming  geniality.  But  Carlyle's 
humor,  in  all  its  sardonic  force,  still  preserves  an  element 
of  geniality.  He  loves  the  grotesque  and  the  absurd  for 
their  own  sakes.  He  cannot  long  restrain  himself  from 
laughter,  good,  wholesome,  volleying  laughter,  directed 
as  often  against  himself  as  others.  Gifts  of  insight,  pas- 
sion, eloquence,  and  imagination  he  had  in  plenty;  but 
the  greatest  and  rarest  of  all  his  gifts  was  humor. 

Those  who  knew  Carlyle  most  intimately  have  all  recog- 


Thomas  Carlyle  195 

i 

nized  this  wonderful  gift  of  humor  which  was  his.  It 
was  said  of  him  by  his  friends  that  when  he  laughed  it 
was  Homeric  laughter — the  laughter  of  the  whole  soul 
and  body  in  complete  abandonment  of  mirth.  This  deep, 
wholesome  laughter  reverberates  through  his  writings. 
No  man  is  quicker  to  catch  a  humorous  point,  or  to  make 
it.  A  collection  of  Carlyle's  best  stories,  phrases,  and 
bits  of  personal  description  would  make  one  of  the  most 
humorous  books  in  the  language.  He  makes  sly  fun  of 
himself,  of  his  poverty,  of  the  unconscious  oddities  of  the 
obscurest  people,  and  equally  of  the  greatest.  His  rail- 
lery is  incessant,  his  eye  for  the  comic  of  supreme  vigi- 
lance. Of  the  obscenity  of  Swift  there  is  no  trace;  it 
was  not  in  Carlyle  to  cherish  unwholesome  thoughts. 
But  in  the  strange  mingling  of  the  wildest  fun  with  the 
most  penetrating  thought,  of  sardonic  bitterness  with  the 
mellowest  laughter,  of  the  most  daring  and  incisive  irony 
with  deep  philosophy  and  serious  feeling,  there  is  much 
that  recalls  Swift,  and  suggests  his  finest  qualities.  With 
Swift  the  bitterness  closed  down  like  a  cloud,  and  extin- 
guished the  humor,  with  the  result  of  that  tragic  madness 
which  still  moves  the  pity  of  the  world.  With  Carlyle  the 
humor  was  always  in  excess  of  the  bitterness;  and  supplied 
that  element  of  saving  health  which  kept  his  genius  fresh 
and  wholesome  amid  many  perils  not  less  real  than  those 
which  destroyed  Swift. 

There  is  one  respect  in  which  it  is  especially  necessary 
to  recollect  this  element  of  humor  in  Carlyle,  if  we  are  to 
judge  him  correctly,  because  most  of  the  harsh  and  unfair 
judgments  passed  upon  him  have  directly  resulted  from  its 
neglect.  It  must  be  remembered  that  Mrs.  Carlyle  had 
many  qualities  in  common  with  her  husband,  and  not  the 


196      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

least  of  these  was  a  similar  power  of  irony  and  humor. 
She  was  accustomed  to  speak  of  Carlyle  in  a  fashion  of 
the  freest  banter.  When  his  lectures  were  first  announced 
in  London  there  was  much  speculation  among  his  friends 
whether  he  would  remember  to  begin  orthodoxly  with 
"Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  to  which  Mrs.  Carlyle  replied 
that  it  was  far  more  likely  he  would  begin  with  "Fool 
creatures  come  hither  for  diversion."  Her  satiric  com- 
ment on  the  success  of  the  business  was,  that  at  last  the 
public  had  apparently  decided  that  he  was  a  man  of  genius, 
and  "worth  being  kept  alive  at  a  moderate  rate."  Is  it 
not  conceivable  to  a  person  of  even  moderate  intelligence 
that  the  conversation  of  two  persons  so  witty,  keen- 
tongued,  and  given  to  satiric  burlesque  and  banter  as  the 
Carlyles,  was  in  no  sense  to  be  taken  literally?  Is  it  not 
further  conceivable  that  many  things  which  look  only 
bitter  when  put  into  print  had  a  very  different  effect  and 
intention  when  uttered  in  the  gay  repartee  of  familiar 
conversation?  The  fact  is,  that  the  Carlyles  habitually 
addressed  one  another  with  irony.  It  is  no  uncommon 
thing  between  intimates :  it  is  rather  a  sign  of  the  security 
of  the  affection  which  unites  them.  But  if,  by  some 
unhappy  accident,  a  third  person  who  has  no  sense  of 
humor  hears  this  gay  clash  of  keen  words,  and  puts  them 
down  in  dull  print,  and  goes  on  to  point  out  in  his  dull 
fashion  that  they  do  not  sound  affectionate,  and  are 
phrases  by  no  means  in  common  use  among  excellent 
married  persons  of  average  intellects,  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
the  worst  sort  of  mischief  may  readily  be  wrought.  Thus, 
for  example,  when  Mrs.  Carlyle  lay  ill  with  a  nervous 
trouble  which  made  it  impossible  for  her  to  close  her 
mouth,  Carlyle,  who  knew  nothing  of  this  peculiarity  of 


Thomas  Carlyle  197 

her  disease,  stood  solemnly  at  the  foot  of  her  bed  one 
day,  and  said:  "Jane,  ye'd  be  in  a  far  more  composed 
state  of  mind  if  ye'd  close  your  mouth."  This  story  is 
told,  forsooth,  as  an  illustration  of  the  harshness  of  Car- 
lyle to  his  wife.  So  far  was  Mrs.  Carlyle  from  inter- 
preting it  in  any  such  way,  that  she  tells  it  herself  with 
inimitable  glee,  and  is  keen  to  describe  its  ludicrous  aspect. 
And  as  in  this  instance,  so  in  a  hundred  more  that  might 
be  analyzed,  humor  was  a  dominant  quality  in  all  the  con- 
versations of  Carlyle,  and  in  almost  equal  degree  of  his 
wife's  also;  and  it  is  only  by  recollecting  this  that  it  is 
possible  to  judge  rightly  a  married  life  which  was  passed 
in  an  atmosphere  and  under  conditions  peculiarly  its  own. 
It  is  necessary  to  dwell  on  this  matter  with  more  full- 
ness than  it  deserves,  because  nothing  has  so  greatly 
injured  Carlyle's  reputation  and  influence  as  the  reported 
infelicities  of  his  domestic  life.  All  these  reports  depend 
on  the  testimony  of  one  or  two  witnesses  whose  word  is 
worthless.  Fortunately  for  us  the  real  truth  is  preserved, 
not  in  the  chance  impressions  of  friends  or  guests  who 
saw  the  Carlyles  from  the  outside,  but  in  the  mutual  cor- 
respondence of  husband  and  wife,  in  their  journals,  and 
in  their  intimate  confessions  to  others  through  a  long 
range  of  years.  There  have  been  many  exquisite  love- 
letters  written  by  literary  men,  but  there  are  none  to  sur- 
pass Carlyle's  letters  to  his  wife.  No  woman  was  ever 
loved  more  deeply:  had  not  the  love  on  both  sides  been 
real  and  vital  there  would  have  been  no  tragedy  to  record. 
It  was  simply  because  these  two  were  so  much  to  each 
other  that  the  slightest  variation  of  temperature  in  their 
affection  was  so  keenly  and  instantaneously  felt  by  each. 
The  real  source  of  their  difficulties  was,  that  they  were  too 


198      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

much  alike  in  temper,  in  methods  of  thought,  and  in  intel- 
lectual outlook.  There  was  about  each  that  difficult 
Scottish  reticence  which  sealed  the  lips  and  forbade  speech 
even  when  the  heart  was  fullest.  The  moment  they  are 
separated,  the  love-letters  flow  in  a  continuous  stream — 
love-letters,  as  I  have  said,  which  are  the  tenderest  in  the 
language  so  far  as  Carlyle  is  concerned,  and  which  never 
lost  their  warmth  through  all  the  years  of  a  long  married 
life.  On  paper  the  heart  opens  itself;  face  to  face  they 
cannot  speak.  As  they  recede  from  one  another  each 
grows  in  luminous  charm,  and  faults  are  forgotten,  and 
passion  is  intensified;  as  they  come  back  from  these  con- 
stant separations,  the  glow  fades  into  the  light  of  common 
day,  and  neither  has  the  tact  or  grace  to  retain  it.  Each 
is  exquisitely,  even  poignantly  sensitive,  and  gives  and 
suffers  wounds  which  are  totally  unsuspected  by  the  other. 
The  heart  is  always  at  boiling-point ;  the  nerves  are  always 
quivering;  there  are  no  cool,  gray  reaches  of  mere  pleas- 
ant comradeship  between  them.  It  is  not  difficult  to 
understand  that  in  such  a  marriage  there  were  hours  of 
the  deepest  blackness;  but  there  were  also  seasons  of  such 
light  and  radiance  as  are  never  found  in  duller  lives. 

But  there  was  another  cause  of  bitterness,  which  Car- 
lyle has  touched  with  the  utmost  delicacy  and  insight  when 
he  writes  (August  24,  1836):  "Oh,  my  poor  bairn,  be  not 
faithless,  but  believing!  Do  not  fling  life  away  as  insup- 
portable, despicable;  but  let  us  work  it  out,  and  rest  it 
out  together,  like  a  true  two,  though  under  some  obstruc- 
tions." One  would  have  supposed  that  Carlyle  would 
have  written  "a  true  one";  but  that  he  had  ceased  to 
hope  for.  Mrs.  Carlyle's  nature  was  of  a  stubbornness 
as  invincible  as  his  own,  and  was  as  deeply  independent 


Thomas  Carlyle  199 

and  original.  It  galled  her  to  shine  only  in  Carlyle's 
light.  She  had  a  literary  faculty,  in  its  way  as  remarkable 
as  her  husband's,  and  she  felt  that  it  was  obscured  by  his 
more  massive  genius.  She  was  not  the  sort  of  woman  to 
find  her  life  in  the  life  of  any  man;  she  craved  a  separate 
platform.  What  Carlyle  could  do  to  soften  and  ease 
matters  he  did.  He  absolutely  refused  all  invitations  to 
great  houses  where  his  wife  was  not  as  welcome  as  him- 
self. He  sincerely  believed  her  to  be  the  cleverest  and 
best  of  women,  who  deserved  distinction  for  her  own 
sake.  But  it  was  all  of  no  avail.  She  allowed  herself  to 
become  frantic  with  jealousy,  and  absolutely  without 
cause.  Her  tongue  could  be  as  satiric,  as  undiscriminat- 
ing,  as  his.  For  the  most  part  she  used  that  potent 
instrument,  as  Dr.  Garnett  says  (a  little  unjustly,  I  think), 
"to  narrow  his  sympathies,  edge  his  sarcasms,  intensify 
his  negations,  and  foster  his  disdain  for  whatever  would 
not  run  in  his  own  groove."  When  it  was  turned  against 
him  one  can  imagine  the  result.  That  which  strikes  one 
most  in  reading  the  story  is,  that  all  the  bitterness  between 
them  might  have  been  avoided  by  a  little  tact,  a  little  com- 
mon sense.  But  in  these  qualities  each  was  deficient. 
Each  was  accustomed  to  see  life  through  the  atmosphere 
of  an  imagination  which  exaggerated  into  grotesqueness 
or  tragedy  the  simplest  things.  Each  felt  the  least  jar 
upon  the  nerves  as  a  veritable  agony.  Life  was  unques- 
tionably hard  enough  for  them  in  any  case,  but  this  intense 
sensitiveness  made  it  tenfold  harder. 

Yet  when  all  these  admissions  are  made,  we  should 
take  an  altogether  wrong  impression  if  we  supposed  that 
these  disagreements  were  normal  and  continuous.  Not 
merely  does  Mrs.  Carlyle's  real  love  for  Carlyle  come  out 


2OO      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

in  so  many  direct  and  positive  expressions,  but  it  is  admir- 
ably reflected  in  her  humor.  There  may  be  wit,  but  there 
cannot  be  humor,  without  love,  and  the  way  in  which  she 
permits  her  bright  and  vivacious  humor  to  play  round  him 
in  her  letters  reveals  not  merely  her  genius,  but  her  heart. 
He  is  her  "poor  babe  of  genius."  "Between  two  and 
three  o'clock  is  a  very  placid  hour  with  the  creature." 
"He  never  complains  of  serious  things,  but  if  his  finger  is 
cut,  one  must  hold  it  and  another  get  plaister."  On  the 
New- Year  morning  of  1863,  Carlyle  no  sooner  gets  up 
than  he  discovers  "that  his  salvation,  here  and  hereafter, 
depended  on  having  'immediately,  without  a  moment's 
delay,'  a  beggarly  pair  of  old  cloth  boots  that  the  street- 
sweeper  would  hardly  have  thanked  him  for,  'lined  with 
flannel,  and  new  bound,  and  repaired  generally.'  ' 
"Nothing  in  the  shape  of  illness  ever  alarms  Mr.  C.  but 
that  of  not  eating  one's  regular  meals."  She  relates  with 
positive  glee,  and  in  the  spirit  of  the  brightest  banter, 
innumerable  episodes  in  which  "the  creature"  performs 
some  eccentric  part;  and  often  enough,  as  Mr.  Moncure 
Conway  has  told  us,  these  little  pieces  of  inimitable  farce 
were  performed  in  Carlyle's  presence,  and  to  his  own 
infinite  amusement.  There  is  always  a  certain  soup  f  on  of 
bitterness  in  the  banter,  but  it  is  a  pleasant,  and  not  a  cor- 
rosive, bitter.  She  knew  exactly  where  the  trouble  was 
between  them;  she  knew  that  when  Carlyle  was  exhausted 
with  his  immense  labors,  and  she  worn  to  the  nerve  with 
neuralgia,  sleeplessness,  and  domestic  worries,  each  was 
apt  to  rub  the  other  the  wrong  way,  and  to  magnify  unin- 
tended slights  into  mischievous  offences.  She  knew  it, 
and  was  sorry  for  it,  and  would  have  avoided  it  if  she 
could.  "Alas,  dear!"  she  writes,  "I  am  very  sorry  for  you. 


Thomas  Carlyle  201 

You,  as  well  as  I,  are  too  vivid;  to  you  as  well  as  me  has 
a  skin  been  given  much  too  thin  for  the  rough  purposes  of 
human  life — God  knows  how  gladly  I  would  be  sweet- 
tempered,  and  cheerful-hearted,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing, 
for  your  single  sake,  if  my  temper  were  not  soured  and 
my  heart  saddened  beyond  my  power  to  mend  them." 
But  though  she  could  be  neither  sweet-tempered  nor 
cheerful,  she  was  always  brave,  bright,  and  sensitive  to 
the  humorous  aspect  of  things.  Upon  the  whole,  one 
may  doubt  if  any  braver  woman  ever  lived;  Joan  of  Arc 
in  her  glittering  armor  was  no  more  of  a  heroine  than 
Mrs.  Carlyle  in  that  small  dominion  at  Cheyne  Row,  in 
her  endless  strifes  with  servants  and  mechanics,  her  reso- 
lute sorties  on  the  wolf  of  poverty  that  for  so  many  years 
growled  at  the  door,  and  her  desperate  ingenuities  to  make 
the  path  easy  for  her  "poor  babe  of  genius." 

The  actual  amount  of  physical  and  nervous  suffering 
which  Mrs.  Carlyle  endured  during  these  years,  and  espe- 
cially towards  the  end,  exceeds  the  total  of  the  worst 
agony  of  those  we  call  martyrs.  What  sadder  or  more 
poignant  cries  have  ever  been  wrung  from  a  human  spirit 
than  these?  "Oh,  my  own  darling,  God  have  pity  on  us! 
Ever  since  the  day  after  you  left,  whatever  flattering 
accounts  may  have  been  sent  you,  the  truth  is,  I  have  been 
wretched — perfectly  wretched  day  and  night,  with  that 
horrible  malady.  So  God  help  me,  for  on  earth  is  no 
help!"  "Oh,  my  dear,  I  think  how  near  my  mother  I 
am!  [She  was  then  staying  at  Holm  Hill,  not  far  from 
where  her  mother  was  buried.]  How  still  I  should  be, 
laid  beside  her!  But  I  wish  to  live  for  you,  if  only  I 

could  live  out  of  torment I  seem  already  to  belong 

to  the  passed-away  as  much  as  to  the  present;  nay,  more. 


2O2      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

God  bless  you  on  your  solitary  way!  ....  Oh,  my  dear, 
I  am  very  weary.  My  agony  has  lasted  long.  I  am 
tempted  to  take  a  long  cry  over  myself — and  no  good  will 
come  of  that."  She  expresses  her  sorrow  for  "the  ter- 
rible, half-insane  sensitiveness  which  drove  me  on  to 
bothering  you.  Oh,  if  God  would  only  lift  my  trouble  off 
me  so  far  that  I  could  bear  it  all  in  silence,  and  not  add 
to  the  troubles  of  others !....!  am  very  stupid  and  low. 
God  can  raise  me  up  again:  but  will  he?  My  dear,  when 
I  have  been  giving  directions  about  the  house,  then  a  feel- 
ing like  a  great  black  wave  will  roll  over  my  breast,  and  I 
say  to  myself,  whatever  pains  be  taken  to  gratify  me,  shall 
I  ever  more  have  a  day  of  ease,  of  painlessness,  or  a 
night  of  sweet  rest  in  that  house,  or  in  any  other  house 
but  the  dark  narrow  one  where  I  shall  arrive  at  last?  Oh, 
dear!  you  cannot  help  me,  though  you  would!  Nobody 
can  help  me!  Only  God:  and  can  I  wonder  if  God  take 
no  heed  of  me,  when  I  have  all  my  life  taken  so  little  heed 
of  Him?"  Nor  are  the  replies  of  Carlyle  less  pathetic. 
"My  thoughts,"  says  he,  "are  a  prayer  for  my  poor  little 
life-partner,  who  has  fallen  lame  beside  me,  after  travel- 
ing so  many  steep  and  thorny  ways My  poor 

little  friend  of  friends!  she  has  fallen  wounded  to  the 
ground,  and  I  am  alone— alone !"  In  her  worst  agonies 
she  turns  to  her  husband  always  with  cries  for  consola- 
tion, and  says:  "I  cannot  tell  how  gentle  and  good  Mr. 
Carlyle  is.  He  is  busy  as  ever,  but  he  studies  my  com- 
fort and  peace  as  he  never  did  before."  At  the  same 
time  he  is  taking  sorrowful  note  of  the  fact  that  she  is 
more  careful  of  his  comforts  than  in  her  busiest  days  of 
health.  Is  there  anywhere  in  literature  a  more  pathetic 
page  than  this?  Can  there  be  any  clearer  testimony  to  the 


Thomas  Carlyle  203 

reality  and  depth  of  that  love  which  bound  these  two  sorely 
tried  souls  together,  or  to  the  error  of  the  general  assump- 
tion that  their  marriage  was  a  foolish  and  unhappy  one? 

Pages  might  be  written  on  such  a  theme,  but  all  that 
can  be  said  profitably  is  said  when  we  are  asked  to  recol- 
lect the  extreme  and  almost  morbid  sensitiveness  of  both 
Carlyle  and  his  wife,  their  common  love  of  irony,  their 
common  practice  of  humorous  exaggeration  on  all  sub- 
jects, but  especially  those  in  which  their  own  personalities 
were  involved,  and  the  strain  upon  nerve  and  temper 
which  was  imposed  by  years  of  unintermittent  labor  and 
vain  struggle.  One  thing  is  at  least  clear,  that  in  their 
more  serious  misunderstandings  they  were  neither  in 
thought  nor  deed  unfaithful  to  one  another,  and  never 
ceased  to  love  each  other  with  absorbing  passion.  Of  the 
dull,  truculent,  selfish  brutality  of  temper  attributed  to 
Carlyle  by  some  writers,  he  was  utterly  incapable,  for  he 
was  the  most  magnanimous  of  men.  "I  could  not  help," 
says  Emerson,  on  recalling  his  memorable  visit  to  Carlyle 
at  Craigenputtock,  "congratulating  him  upon  his  treasure 
of  a  wife."  Others  who  visited  the  Carlyles  during  this 
same  period,  when  life  was  hardest  with  them,  have  borne 
witness  that  they  lived  with  one  another  upon  delightful 
terms.  Surely,  if  some  bitter  words  escaped  them  in  the 
long  struggle,  it  is  a  matter,  not  for  wonder,  but  for  forgive- 
ness; surely  also  some  allowance  can  be  made  for  a  man 
of  genius  staggering  beneath  a  burden  almost  too  great  to 
be  borne,  and  for  a  woman  broken  in  health  by  a  most 
distressing  malady,  each  of  them,  as  Mrs.  Carlyle  con- 
fessed, "too  vivid,"  and  "with  a  skin  much  too  thin  for 
the  rough  purposes  of  human  life."  When  the  unwhole- 
some love  of  scandal,  aroused  by  the  passion  which  mean 


204      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

natures  find  in  discovering  the  faults  of  the  great,  subsides, 
no  doubt  the  true  facts  will  be  seen  in  their  right  per- 
spective, and  blame  will  be  exchanged  for  pity,  censure 
for  a  comprehending  charity. 

In  the  mean  time  we  may  remember  that  those  who 
knew  Carlyle  the  best  speak  most  warmly  of  the  magna- 
nimity of  his  character. 

The  impression  which  Carlyle  made  upon  his  contem- 
poraries is  the  best  comment  on  his  character.  The  most 
serious  men  of  his  time  recognized  him  as  a  modern  John 
the  Baptist,  and  even  a  worldly  ecclesiastic  like  Bishop 
Wilberforce  described  him  as  "a  most  eminently  religious 
man."  Charles  Kingsley  honored  him  as  his  master,  and 
has  drawn  an  admirable  portrait  of  him  as  Saunders 
Mackaye  in  Alton  Locke,  of  winch  description  Carlyle 
characteristically  said  that  it  was  a  "wonderfully  splendid 
and  coherent  piece  of  Scotch  bravura."  His  gospel  is 
contained  in  Sartor  Resartus,  of  which  it  has  been  perti- 
nently said  that  it  "will  be  read  as  a  gospel  or  not  at  all." 
A  calm  and  penetrative  critic  like  James  Martineau  wit- 
nesses to  the  same  overwhelming  religious  force  in  Carlyle 
when  he  speaks  of  Lls  writings  as  a  "pentecostal  power 
on  the  sentiments  of  Englishmen."  On  the  truly  poetic 
nature  of  his  genius  all  the  great  critics  have  long  ago 
agreed.  How  could  it  be  otherwise  in  regard  of  writings 
whose  every  second  paragraph  kindles  into  the  finest 
imaginative  fire?  His  power  of  imagery  is  Dantesque; 
his  range  is  truely  epic;  the  very  phrases  of  his  diaries 
and  letters  are  steeped  in  poetry,  as  when  he  speaks  of 
John  Sterling's  last  "verses,  written  for  myself  alone,  as 
in  star-fire  and  immortal  tears."  The  testimonies  to  his 
power  of  humor,  so  far  as  his  conversations  are  con- 


Thomas  Carlyle  205 

cerned,  are  much  too  numerous  for  recapitulation.  His 
own  definition  of  humor  was  "a  genial  sympathy  with  the 
under  side";  and  this  vivid  sympathy  expressed  itself  in 
his  use  of  ludicrous  and  extraordinary  metaphor,  and  in 
his  "delicate  sense  of  absurdity."  His  most  volcanic 
denunciations  usually  "ended  in  a  laugh,  the  heartiest  in 
the  world,  at  his  own  ferocity.  Those  who  have  not 
heard  that  laugh,"  says  Mr.  Allingham,  "will  never  know 
what  Carlyle's  talk  was."  Prophet,  poet,  and  humorist — 
so  stands  Carlyle  before  the  world,  a  man  roughly  hewn 
out  of  the  primeval  earth,  conceived  in  the  womb  of  labor 
and  hardship,  yet  touched  with  immortal  fire,  fashioned 
in  the  rarest  mould  of  greatness,  tenderness,  and  heroism; 
clearly  the  most  massive,  impressive,  and  fascinating  figure 
in  nineteenth-century  literature.  It  remains  for  us  to  see 
what  his  writings  teach  us,  and  what  is  taught  yet  more 
forcibly  by  the  epic  of  his  life. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  In  what  respects  may  Carlyle  be  called  the  greatest 
genius  of  the  nineteenth  century? 

2.  What  did  Goethe  say  of  him? 

3.  How  did  the  nature  of  Carlyle's  early  life  prove  the 
sincerity  of  his  purpose? 

4.  How  did  Carlyle's  genius  differ  from  that  of  Goethe? 

5.  How  were  his  habits  of  expression  colored  by  his  im- 
agination? 

6.  What  kind  of  humor  did  Carlyle  possess? 

7.  Illustrate  Mrs.  Carlyle's  use  of  humor  of  a  similar  kind. 

8.  Why  has  Carlyle's  domestic  life  been  so  unfortunately 
misunderstood? 

9.  What  real  causes  for  suffering  existed  in  the  lives  of 
these  two  people? 

10.  What  is  undoubtedly  the  true  view  to  be  taken  of  the 
whole  subject? 


206      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Thomas  Carlyle.    Richard  Garnett.    (Great  Writers  Series.) 

Thomas  Carlyle :  A  History  of  the  First  Forty  Years  of 
His  Life.  J.  A.  Froude. 

Thomas  Carlyle :  A  History  of  His  Life  in  London.  }.  A. 
Froude. 

Thomas  Carlyle.  Reminiscences,  letters,  correspondence 
of  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  correspondence  between  Goethe  and 
Carlyle.  Edited  by  Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

Lessons  from  My  Masters:  Carlyle,  Tennyson,  Ruskin. 
Peter  Bayne. 

Carlyle's  Complete  Works  (Illustrated  Cabinet  Edition), 
$1.50  per  volume,  sold  separately.  There  are  many  cheap 
editions  of  Sartor  Resartus,  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,  and  of 
some  of  his  essays. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 
CARLYLE'S  TEACHING 

Maurice  once  said  of  himself  that  he  only  had  three  or 
four  things  to  say,  and  he  felt  it  necessary  to  go  on  saying 
them  over  and  over  again.  The  same  criticism  might  be 
passed  upon  Carlyle.  No  great  writer  has  repeated  him- 
self with  such  freedom  and  emphasis.  It  therefore  be- 
comes a  comparatively  easy  task  to  discern  the  main  lines 
of  his  teaching.  In  whatever  he  wrote,  whether  history 
or  essay,  private  journals  or  biography,  these  main  lines 
of  thought  perpetually  appear,  like  auriferous  strata, 
pushing  themselves  up  through  the  soil,  and  indicating  the 
nature  of  his  thinking. 

The  remark  of  Bishop  Wilberforce,  that  Carlyle  was 
an  eminently  religious  man,  gives  us  the  true  starting- 
point  for  any  honest  understanding  of  his  teaching.  Mr. 
Frbude  has  spoken  of  him  as  a  Calvinist  without  the 
theology,  and  in  the  main  this  is  true.  Every  one  knows 
the  striking  passage  in  which  Carlyle  tells  us  how  Irving 
drew  from  him  the  confession  that  he  was  no  longer  able 
to  see  the  truths  of  religion  from  the  orthodox  standpoint. 
Upon  analysis  this  will  be  found  to  mean  that  he  had 
definitely  rejected  the  supernatural.  He  once  said  that 
nothing  could  be  more  certain  than  that  the  miracles,  as 
they  were  related  in  the  Gospels,  did  not  and  could  not 
have  occurred.  For  the  church,  as  such,  he  had  small 
respect,  because  it  seemed  to  him  to  be  mainly  given  over 

207 


208      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

to  a  hollow  recitation  of  formulae  which  it  had  really 
ceased  to  believe,  and  which  no  rational  man  ever  would 
believe  again  with  genuine  sincerity.  He  regarded  the 
efforts  of  Maurice  to  frame  a  rational  basis  for  belief  in 
the  supernatural  as  the  endless  spinning  of  a  rope  of  sand. 
He  once  pointed  to  Dean  Stanley  and  said,  with  cutting 
sarcasm:  "There  goes  Stanley  knocking  holes  in  the 
bottom  of  the  Church  of  England."  But  on  the  other 
hand,  he  had  more  than  sarcasm:  he  had  an  absolutely 
savage  contempt  for  anything  approaching  atheism.  Of 
Mill  he  spoke  with  bitter  and  habitual  ridicule,  although 
he  recognized  in  him  the  finest  friendliness  of  nature;  of 
Darwin  "as  though  he  had  robbed  him."  He  dismissed 
the  discoveries  of  Darwin  with  the  scathing  phrase, 
"Gorilla  damnifications  of  humanity."  He  speaks  of  his 
"whole  softened  heart"  going  out  anew  in  childlike  utter- 
ance of  the  great  prayer,  "Our  Father,  who  art  in  heaven." 
While  he  cannot  believe  the  Gospel  miracles,  he  neverthe- 
less teaches  that  the  world  itself  is  nothing  less  than  one 
vast  standing  miracle.  No  saint  or  prophet  ever  spoke 
with  a  surer  faith  of  that  great  Yonder,  to  which  he 
believes  his  father  is  gathered,  and  where  he  and  all  whom 
he  loves  will  some  day  be  reunited  in  some  new  intimacy 
of  infinite  love.  He  scruples  even  to  use  the  name  of 
God,  inventing  paraphrases  of  it  because  he  feels  it  is  too 
great  and  holy  for  common  utterance.  A  profound  belief 
in  Providence  governed  all  his  estimates  of  life,  and  prayer 
was  with  him  a  habit  and  an  urgent  duty,  since  it  was  the 
lifting  up  of  the  heart  to  the  Infinite  above,  which  answered 
to  the  Infinite  within. 

Now,  nothing  can  well  appear  more  contradictory  than 
these  statements,  and  they  can  only  be  harmonized  by  the 


Carlyle's  Teaching  209 

recollection  of  one  fact,  viz.,  that  in  Carlyle  emotion  out- 
ran reason,  and  what  was  impossible  to  the  pure  intellect 
was  constantly  accepted  on  the  testimony  of  his  spiritual 
intuitions.  The  merely  theological  conclusions  of  Calvin 
he  absolutely  rejected,  but  the  essence  of  Calvinism  ran 
like  a  subtle  spirit  through  his  whole  nature.  What  he 
really  aimed  at  was  to  show  that  religion  rested  on  no 
external  evidences  at  all,  but  on  the  indubitable  intuitions 
of  the  human  soul.  He  would  not  even  take  the  trouble 
to  set  about  proving  that  there  was  a  God ;  he  would  have 
agreed  with  Addison  that  the  man  who  said  that  he  did 
not  believe  in  a  God  was  an  impudent  liar  and  knew  it. 
He  was  angrily  contemptuous  of  Kenan's  Life  of  Jesus, 
although  Renan  probably  said  nothing  more  than  he  him- 
self believed;  but  he  felt  a  reverence  for  Christ  which 
revolted  from  Kenan's  method  of  statement,  and  he  said 
that  his  life  of  Christ  was  something  that  never  ought  to 
be  written  at  all.  Thus  it  becomes  more  necessary  with 
Carlyle  than  with  any  other  writer  of  our  time  to  distin- 
guish sharply  between  his  opinions  and  his  convictions. 
In  point  of  fact,  he  wrote  on  religion,  as  on  all  other  sub- 
jects, from  the  standpoint  of  the  poet  rather  than  of  the 
scholar  or  the  philosopher.  Driven  back  upon  his  defences, 
Calvin  himself  could  not  have  spoken  with  more  lucidity 
and  passion  of  his  primary  religious  beliefs  than  Carlyle. 
The  Shorter  Catechism  had  passed  into  the  very  blood  and 
marrow  of  his  nature.  In  the  bare  house  at  Ecclefechan  the 
"Cottar's  Saturday  Night"  was  a  veritable  fact,  and  from 
the  Puritan  mould  of  his  childhood  he  never  escaped.  He 
never  wished  to  do  so.  He  sought  rather  to  distill  the 
finer  essences  of  Calvinism  afresh,  and  in  a  great  measure 
he  did  so.  His  real  creed  was  Calvinism  shorn  of  its  logic 


2io      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

and  interpenetrated  with  emotion.  He  translated  it  into 
poetry  and  touched  it  with  the  iridescent  glow  and  color 
of  transcendentalism.  He  separated  what  he  considered 
its  accidental  and  formal  elements  from  the  essential,  and 
to  those  essential  and  imperishable  elements  he  gave  a 
new  authority  and  currency  by  the  impact  of  his  own 
astonishing  genius. 

What  were  these  elements?  As  restated  by  Carlyle, 
they  were  belief  in  God  as  the  certainty  of  certainties  on 
which  all  human  life  is  built;  of  a  God  working  in  history, 
and  revealing  Himself  in  no  mere  collection  of  books,  but 
in  all  events;  of  all  work  as  perenially  noble  and  beauti- 
ful, because  it  was  God's  appointed  task;  of  duty  and 
morality  as  the  only  real  prerogatives  of  man ;  of  sincerity 
and  honesty  as  the  chief  achievements  which  God  de- 
manded of  man,  and  the  irreducible  minimum  of  any 
honorable  human  life.  The  world  was  no  mere  mill,  turn- 
ing its  wheels  mechanically  in  the  Time-floods,  without 
any  Overseer,  but  a  Divinely  appointed  world,  and  to 
know  that  was  the  chief  element  of  all  knowledge.  Man 
was  not  a  mechanism,  but  an  organism;  not  a  "patent 
digesting  machine,"  but  a  divinely  fashioned  creature. 
The  everlasting  Yea  was  to  admit  this;  the  everlasting  No 
to  deny  it.  "On  the  roaring  billows  of  Time  thou  art  not 
engulfed,  but  borne  aloft  into  the  azure  of  Eternity.  Love 
not  pleasure:  love  God.  This  is  the  everlasting  Yea, 
wherein  all  contradiction  is  solved,  wherein  whoso  walks 
and  works  it  is  well  with  him.  Even  to  the  greatest  that 
has  felt  such  moment,  is  it  not  miraculous  and  God- 
announcing,  even  as  under  simpler  figures  to  the  simplest 
and  the  least?  The  mad  primeval  Discord  is  hushed;  the 
rudely  jumbled  conflicting  elements  bind  themselves  into 


Carlyle's  Teaching  in 

separate  firmaments;  deep,  silent  rock- foundations  are 
built  beneath;  and  the  skyey  vault  with  its  everlasting 
luminaries  above;  instead  of  a  dark,  wasteful  Chaos,  we 
have  a  blooming,  fertile,  heaven-encompassed  World." 

To  believe  this,  according  to  Carlyle,  implied  a  species 
of  conversion,  and  of  his  own  conversion,  when  these 
things  suddenly  became  real  to  him  one  night  in  Leith 
Walk,  he  has  left  as  circumstantial  an  account  as  we  have 
of  the  conversion  of  Luther  or  Wesley.  What  it  implies 
is,  in  effect,  a  certain  reconciliation  to  God,  to  the  world, 
and  to  one's  self,  Carlyle's  intense  sympathy  with  Crom- 
well, which  has  made  him  his  best  biographer,  arises  from 
the  fact  that  he  found  in  Cromwell  an  echo  of  his  own 
thoughts  and  a  picture  of  his  own  experiences.  When 
Cromwell  said,  "What  are  all  events  but  God  working?" 
we  readily  feel  that  the  very  accent  of  the  thought  is  Car- 
lyle's. When  Cromwell  steadies  his  trembling  hand  and 
says,  "A  governor  should  die  working,"  he  expresses 
Carlyle's  gospel  of  work  in  its  finest  form.  When  Crom- 
well talks  of  dwelling  in  Kedar  and  Meshech,  where  no 
water  is,  and  of  passing  through  strange  hours  of  black- 
ness and  darkness,  he  is  talking  entirely  after  the  manner 
of  Carlyle.  After  that  memorable  experience  in  Leith 
Walk,  Carlyle  tells  us,  his  mood  was  no  longer  despond- 
ence, but  valorous  defiance.  The  world,  at  least,  had  no 
further  power  to  hurt  or  hinder  him:  is  he  not  now  sure 
that  he  lives  and  moves  at  the  bidding  of  a  divine  task- 
master? Long  afterwards,  when  his  first  draft  of  the 
French  Revolution  was  burned,  this  faith  in  the  mystery 
of  God's  ordering  was  his  one  source  of  solace.  "It  is 
as  if  my  invisible  schoolmaster  had  torn  my  copy-book 
when  I  showed  it,  and  said,  'No,  boy!  thou  must  write 


212      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

it  better.'  What  can  I,  sorrowing,  do  but  obey — obey 
and  think  it  the  best?  To  work  again;  and  oh!  may  God 
be  with  me,  for  this  earth  is  not  friendly.  On  in  His 
name!  I  was  the  nearest  being  happy  sometimes  these 
last  few  days  that  I  have  been  for  months!"  To  be 
reconciled  to  himself  meant  in  such  circumstances  that  he 
was  willing  to  work,  even  if  nothing  came  of  his  work, 
since  work  in  itself  was  the  appointed  duty  and  true  glory 
of  man.  "Produce!  Produce!  were  it  but  the  pitifullest 
infinitesimal  fraction  of  a  product,  produce  it,  in  God's 
name.  'Tis  the  utmost  thou  hast  in  thee:  out  with  it, 
then.  Up!  up!  Whatsoever  thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do 
it  with  thy  whole  might.  Work  while  it  is  called  to-day; 
for  the  night  cometh  wherein  no  man  can  work."  Not, 
perhaps,  a  hopeful  or  a  cheering  creed  this;  but  at  all 
events  a  strenuous  and  a  noble  one.  Such  as  it  is,  it  con- 
tains the  substance  of  Carlyle's  contribution  to  religious 
thought.  And  we  may  profitably  remember  that  the  true 
effect  and  grandeur  of  a  creed  is  not  to  be  measured  by 
its  dimensions,  but  by  its  intensity.  We  do  not  need  large 
creeds  for  high  lives,  but  we  do  need  deep  convictions, 
and  Carlyle  believed  his  creed  and  lived  by  it  with  pas- 
sionate sincerity. 

I  have  said  that  this  is  not  a  hopeful  creed,  nor  was 
Carlyle  ever  a  hopeful  prophet.  He  called  himself  a 
Radical  of  the  quiet  order,  but  he  had  none  of  the  hope- 
fulness of  Radicalism,  nor  was  it  in  him  to  be  quiet  on  any 
subject  that  interested  him.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  truth 
in  the  ironical  remark  of  Maurice,  that  Carlyle  believed  in 
a  God  who  left  off  governing  the  world  at  the  death  of 
Oliver  Cromwell.  He  saw  nothing  in  modern  progress 
that  justified  its  boasts,  and  it  must  be  owned  that  his 


Carlyle's  Teaching  213 

social  forecasts  have  been  all  too  amply  fulfilled.  The 
hopefulness  of  Emerson  positively  angered  him.  He  took 
him  round  London,  showing  him  the  worst  of  its  many 
abominations,  asking  after  each  had  been  duly  objurgated, 
"Do  you  believe  in  the  Devil  now?"  His  very  reverence 
for  work  led  him  to  reverence  any  sort  of  great  worker, 
irrespective  of  the  positive  results  of  his  energy.  It  led 
him  into  the  mistake  of  glorifying  Frederick  the  Great. 
It  led  him  into  the  still  greater  error  of  defending  Dr. 
Francia,  the  dictator  of  Paraguay.  So  far  as  the  first 
article  of  the  Radical  faith  goes,  a  belief  in  the  people 
and  the  wisdom  of  majorities,  he  was  a  hardened  un- 
believer. Yet  it  was  not  because  he  did  not  sympathize 
with  the  people.  His  rapid  and  brilliant  etchings  of 
laboring  folk — the  poor  drudge,  son  of  a  race  of  drudges, 
with  bowed  shoulders  and  broken  finger-nails,  whom  he 
sees  in  Surges;  the  poor  Irishman  "in  Piccadilly,  blue- 
visaged,  thatched  in  rags,  a  blue  child  on  each  arm: 
hunger-driven,  wide-mouthed,  seeking  whom  he  may 
devour" — are  full  of  tenderness  and  compassion.  He 
never  forgot  that  he  himself  was  the  child  of  laboring  folk, 
and  he  spoke  for  his  order.  But  he  had  no  mind  to  hand 
over  the  government  of  the  nation  to  the  drudges.  His 
theory  of  government  was  government  by  great  men,  by 
which  he  meant  strong  men.  History  was  to  him  at  bottom 
the  story  of  great  men  at  work.  He  believed  in  individual- 
ism to  the  last  degree  when  government  was  in  question. 
If  a  man  had  the  power  to  rule,  it  was  his  right  to  be  a 
ruler,  and  those  who  had  not  the  power  should  be  glad  and 
thankful  to  obey.  If  they  would  not  obey,  the  one  remedy 
was  the  Napoleonic  "whiff  of  grapeshot,"  or  something 
akin  to  it,  and  in  this  case  Might  was  the  divinest  Right. 


214      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Yet  this  is  very  far  from  being  all  Carlyle's  political 
gospel.  He  advocated  emigration,  and  by  systematic 
emigration  a  dimly  formulated  scheme  of  imperial  feder- 
ation, long  before  these  things  were  discussed  by  poli- 
ticians. His  denunciations  of  competition  really  paved 
the  way  for  the  great  schemes  of  co-operation  which  have 
since  been  effected.  More  or  less  he  believed  that  the 
great  remedy  for  poverty  was  to  get  back  to  the  land. 
"Captains  of  industry"  was  his  suggestive  phrase,  by 
which  he  indicated  the  organization  of  labor.  His  ap- 
peals to  the  aristocracy  to  be  a  true  aristocracy  of  work, 
alive  to  their  social  duties,  and  justly  powerful  because 
nobly  wise,  were  certainly  not  unregarded.  Much  that 
we  call  socialism  to-day  had  its  real  origin  in  the  writings 
of  Carlyle.  The  condition  of  the  people  was  with  him  a 
burning  and  tremendous  question.  It  was  not  within  the 
range  of  his  powers  to  suggest  much  in  the  way  of  prac- 
tical measures;  his  genius  was  not  constructive.  The 
function  of  the  prophet  has  always  been  rather  to  expose 
an  evil  than  to  provide  a  remedy.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  Carlyle's  denunciations  are  more  convincing  than  his 
remedies.  But  they  had  one  effect  whose  magnitude  is 
immeasurable:  they  roused  the  minds  of  all  thinking  men 
throughout  England  to  the  real  state  of  affairs,  and  created 
the  new  paths  of  social  reform.  The  blazing  vehemence 
of  his  style,  the  intense  vividness  of  his  pictures,  could 
not  fail  to  arrest  attention.  He  shattered  forever  the 
hypocrisy  that  went  by  the  name  of  "unexampled  pros- 
perity." He  forced  men  to  think.  In  depicting  the  social 
England  of  his  time,  he  "splashed"  great  masses  of  color 
on  his  canvas,  as  he  did  in  describing  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, and  all  earnest  men  were  astonished  into  attention. 


Carlyle's  Teaching  215 

The  result  has  been,  as  Dr.  Garnett  puts  it,  that  "opinion 
has  in  the  main  followed  the  track  pointed  out  by  Carlyle's 
luminous  finger";  and  a  completer  testimony  to  his  politi- 
cal prescience  could  not  be  desired. 

Much  must  be  allowed  for  Carlyle's  love  of  paradox  in 
the  statement  of  these  truths.  Fundamentally,  it  is  the 
exaggeration  of  the  humorist  who,  in  his  habitual  ironies, 
is  half-conscious  that  he  caricatures  himself  as  well  as  his 
opponents.  No  doubt  it  would  have  been  very  helpful  to 
persons  of  slow  understanding  if  he  had  always  spoken 
with  logical  gravity,  and  had  strictly  defined  and  stated 
what  he  meant.  But  then  he  would  have  been  as  dull  as 
they  are.  The  half-dozen  truths  which  he  had  to  teach 
are  as  common  as  copy-book  headlines,  and  as  depressing. 
Put  in  plain  and  exact  English,  they  are  things  which 
everybody  knows,  and  is  willing  to  accept  theoretically, 
however  little  he  is  disposed  to  act  upon  them.  The 
supreme  merit  of  Carlyle  is,  that  he  sets  these  common- 
places on  fire  by  his  vehemence,  and  vitalizes  them  by  his 
humor.  It  is  the  humor  of  Carlyle  that  keeps  his  writ- 
ings fresh.  His  nicknames  stick  when  his  argument  is 
forgotten.  In  his  hands  political  economy  itself  ceases  to 
be  a  dismal  science,  and  becomes  a  manual  of  witty  meta- 
phors. This  is  so  great  an  achievement  that  we  may 
readily  forgive  his  frequent  inconsequence,  and  what  is 
worse,  his  unfairness  and  exaggeration  of  statement. 

To  this  it  may  be  added,  that  where  Carlyle  was  con- 
vinced of  any  unfairness  of  statement,  or  unneedful 
acerbity  of  temper,  no  one  showed  a  quicker  or  nobler 
magnanimity  in  apology.  His  bark  was  always  worse 
than  his  bite.  We  read  his  ferocious  attacks  on  oppo- 
nents, or  his  satiric  descriptions  of  persons,  in  cool  blood, 


2i6      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

and  do  not  hear  that  genial  laugh  which  wound  up  many 
similar  vituperations  in  his  conversation,  and  drew  their 
sting.  For  all  his  angry  counsel  to  whip  drones  and  shoot 
rogues,  Mrs.  Carlyle  tells  us  that  when  she  read  aloud  to 
him  the  account  of  the  execution  of  the  assassin  Buranelli, 
"tears  rolled  down  Carlyle's  cheeks — he  who  talks  of 
shooting  Irishmen  who  will  not  work."  He  was  lament- 
ably wrong  in  his  judgment  of  the  great  issues  involved  in 
the  American  Civil  War;  but  when,  years  afterwards, 
Mrs.  Charles  Lowell,  whose  son  had  fallen  in  the  war, 
visited  him,  he  took  her  by  her  hand,  and  said,  even  with 
tears,  "I  doubt  I  have  been  mistaken."  Amid  all  his 
bright  derision  and  savage  mockery,  no  one  can  fail  to  see 
that  he  sought  for  and  loved  truth  alone.  That  was,  and 
will  always  remain,  his  crowning  honor.  He  sought  it, 
and  was  loyal  to  it,  when  he  turned  sadly  from  the  minis- 
try for  which  he  was  destined,  when  he  went  into  the 
wilderness  of  Craigenputtock,  when  he  was  content  to  be 
ostracized  by  Jeffrey  and  his  clique  as  an  intellectual 
Ishmael,  when  he  finally  came  to  London  and  took  up  his 
real  life  work,  content  to  starve,  if  needs  be,  but  resolved 
to  speak  or  write  no  word  that  should  win  him  bread  or 
fame  at  the  price  of  insincerity.  And  in  the  hearts  of 
thousands  of  men,  and  among  them  the  best  and  ablest 
of  his  time,  he  begot  the  same  temper.  Kingsley,  Ster- 
ling, Ruskin,  and  a  score  of  others  gathered  to  his  stan- 
dard, not  to  name  the  throng  of  humbler  disciples  in  every 
walk  of  life  who  caught  the  inspiration  of  his  passion, 
and  reinterpreted  his  thoughts.  This  was  the  work  he 
did  for  England;  amid  manifold  shams  and  hypocrisies 
he  stood  fast  by  the  truth,  for  it  was  to  bear  witness  to 
the  truth  that  he  was  born,  and  came  into  the  world. 


Carlyle's  Teaching  217 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  Why  is  it  comparatively  easy  to  discern  the  main  lines 
of  Carlyle's  teaching? 

2.  What  difficulty  did  he  find  with  the  religious  beliefs  of 
his  time? 

3.  How  did  he  feel  toward  anything  like  atheism? 

4.  What  was  his  own  attitude  toward  God? 

5.  How  did  his  opinions  sometimes  differ  from  his  con- 
victions? 

6.  What  were  the  chief  elements  of  Carlyle's  creed? 

7.  How  does  his  life  of  Cromwell  reflect  his  own  experi- 
ences? 

8.  How  did  he  meet  the  tragic  destruction  of  his  work  on 
the  French  Revolution? 

9.  How  was  he  impressed  by  the  social  conditions  of  his 
own  times? 

10.  What  was  his  idea  of  the  rule  of  the  strong? 

11.  How  did  he  try  to  right  the  social  wrongs  of  his  day? 

12.  How  did  his  gifts  of  style  help  him  in  putting  the  plain 
truth? 

13.  How  did  his  one  great  purpose  in  life  make  him  mag- 
nanimous when  he  erred  as  well  as  heroic  in  the  face  of  ob- 
stacles? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Letters  and  Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle.  By  J.  A. 
Froude. 

Life  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle.     Mrs.  Alexander  Ireland. 

In  Carlyle's  Country :  A  Sunday  in  Cheyne  Row.  John 
Burroughs,  in  "  Fresh  Fields." 

Some  Aspects  of  Poetry.  (Prose  Poets — Carlyle.)  J.  C. 
Shairp. 

Modern  Guides  of  English  Thought  in  Matters  of  Faith. 
(Carlyle.)  R.  H.  Hutton. 

My  Study  Windows.    (Carlyle.)    James  Russell  Lowell. 

Miscellanies.    Vol.  I.    John  Morley. 

Three  Great  Teachers  of  Our  Own  Time.    A.  H.  Japp. 


CHAPTER    XIX 
JOHN  RUSKIN 

Born  in  London,  February  8,  1819.  Took  his  degree  at  Oxford, 
1842.  First  volume  of  Modern  Painters  published,  1843. 
Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture,  1849.  The  Stones  of  Venice, 
1851-1853.  The  Two  Paths,  1854.  The  Elements  of  Draw- 
ing, 1857.  The  Elements  of  Perspective,  1859.  Among  his 
most  popular  smaller  books  are:  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive, 
Sesame  and  the  Lilies,  The  Queen  of  the  Air,  Ethics  of  the 
Dust,  Until  This  Last,  which  he  has  called  his  best  work. 
Fors  Clavigera,  a  series  of  letters,  published  with  index, 
1887.  Died  at  Coniston,  January  20,  1900.  This  and  the 
following  chapters  were  written  during  the  life  of  Ruskin, 
and  the  phraseology  has  not  been  altered. 

It  is  the  prophetic  force  of  Carlyle  which  is  his  most 
remarkable  quality,  as  we  have  seen,  and  the  secret  of  his 
abiding  influence;  it  is  also  the  primal  and  distinctive  gift 
of  Ruskin.  In  poetry,  Wordsworth  and  Shelley  represent 
this  force;  in  history,  Carlyle;  in  social  economics,  Rus- 
kin. The  prophet  is  the  summed-up  soul  and  conscience 
of  a  community,  the  emblem  and  the  fountain  of  its  moral 
life.  He  derives  nothing  from  convention;  he  speaks  out 
of  his  own  strength  and  originality  of  nature,  with  the 
vehemence,  and  even  anger,  of  great  convictions,  and  with 
an  amplitude  of  utterance  which  scorns  details  in  its  pas- 
sion for  principles.  It  is  above  all  things  his  business  to 
see;  then  to  speak  of  what  he  sees  with  unfaltering  sin- 
cerity, addressing  himself  to  his  fellows  in  such  a  way  as 

218 


John  Ruskin  219 

to  reveal  to  them  their  own  deficiencies;  finally  to  inspire 
in  them  a  desire  of  reformation,  and  of  all  noble  progress 
and  accomplishment.  This  has  been  the  lifelong  mission 
of  Ruskin. 

It  has  been,  however,  a  mission  very  much  misappre- 
hended. Tolstoi  has  affirmed  that  Ruskin  is  one  of  the 
greatest  men  of  the  age,  and  has  said  that  it  pained  him 
to  notice  that  English  people  generally  were  of  a  different 
opinion.  The  fact  of  the  matter  is,  that  England  has 
never  quite  known  how  to  take  Ruskin. 

He  presents  a  character  of  so  many  subtleties  and  vari- 
ations, so  tremulously  poised  between  common  sense  and 
eccentricity,  so  clear  and  firm  in  outline,  yet  touched  with 
such  deceptive  lights  and  shadows,  and  capable  of  such 
extraordinary  transformations,  that  average  opinion  has 
preferred  to  accept  him  as  a  great  stylist  rather  than  a 
great  man.  He  is  by  turns  reactionary  and  progressive, 
simple  and  shrewd,  a  mystic  and  a  man  of  practical  affairs. 
He  has  bewildered  men  by  the  very  brilliance  of  his  ver- 
satility. No  sooner  has  the  world  owned  him  as  the 
prince  of  art  critics  than  he  sets  up  as  the  exponent  of  a 
new  political  economy.  He  will  show  us  how  to  weave 
cloth  honestly  as  well  as  to  draw  truly;  how  to  build  char- 
acter, as  a  matter  of  greater  import  even  than  the  building 
of  a  Venice;  and  he  who  is  an  authority  on  Botticelli  must 
needs  also  be  an  authority  on  drains.  He  links  together 
in  the  strangest  fashion  the  remotest  things — philosophy 
and  agriculture,  theology  and  sanitation,  the  manner  of  a 
man's  life  and  the  quality  of  his  pictures.  It  is  this  very 
variety  and  exuberance  of  mind  which  has  kept  the  esti- 
mate of  his  genius  low  among  his  countrymen.  They 
have  not  been  able  to  follow  the  nimbleness  of  his  thought, 


220      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

and  to  perceive  that,  eccentric  as  it  seems,  it  moves  in  a 
precisely  ordered  orbit.  The  last  thing  that  the  English 
reader  would  say  of  Ruskin  is,  that  he  sees  life  steadily, 
and  he  sees  it  whole;  yet  that  is  the  very  thing  that 
Tolstoi  would  say  of  him,  and  he  would  add  that  therein 
lies  his  claim  to  be  a  great  man. 

And  in  such  a  contention  Tolstoi  would  be  right;  the 
cardinal  fact  about  Ruskin  is,  that  he  sees  life  steadily  and 
sees  it  whole.  This  is  the  explanation  of  the  immense 
variety  of  theme  in  his  writings;  it  springs  from  width  of 
vision.  If  he  had  seen  life  only  in  some  one  special  aspect, 
as  for  example,  in  its  relation  to  art  alone,  which  is  com- 
monly supposed  to  be  his  one  function,  the  critics  would 
at  once  have  known  how  to  rank  him.  There  would  have 
been  no  hesitation  as  to  the  place  that  was  his  by  right. 
But  when  he  links  art  with  morality,  when  he  sets  himself 
to  the  discovery  of  the  principles  by  which  art  is  great, 
and  finds  them  to  be  also  the  only  verified  principles  by 
which  life  is  also  great,  then  criticism  becomes  purblind 
and  embarrassed.  It  was  prepared  to  praise  the  critic  of 
art,  but  the  critic  of  life  is  a  very  different  matter.  Hence 
there  arises  the  natural  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  reader 
to  regard  the  opinions  of  Ruskin  as  eccentric,  but  their 
expression  as  perfect — to  value  him  as  a  master  of  literary 
expression,  but  not  as  a  teacher — to  agree,  in  point  of 
fact,  that  he  is  a  great  writer,  but  to  deny  the  contention 
of  Tolstoi  that  he  is  a  great  man.  It  is  only  going  a  step 
further  to  say  of  him,  as  it  was  said  of  Goldsmith,  who 
"wrote  like  an  angel,  but  talked  like  a  poor  poll,"  that 
Ruskin  writes  nonsense,  but  writes  it  beautifully.  That 
this  is  the  general  opinion  of  English  readers,  no  one 
would  venture  to  say;  but  having  regard  to  the  general 


John  Ruskin  221 

praise  of  the  beauty  of  his  style,  and  the  general  contempt 
of  the  social  principles  he  enunciates,  one  can  see  without 
difficulty  what  it  is  Tolstoi  meant  when  he  called  him  a 
great  man,  and  deplored  that  his  countrymen  held  a  differ- 
ent opinion. 

The  personal  history  of  Ruskin  is  the  history  of  his 
writings.  No  youth  ever  began  life  with  less  likelihood 
of  prophetic  development.  He  was  the  petted  if  not 
spoiled  child  of  wealthy  parents.  He  begins  his  long  use 
of  the  pen  by  the  production  of  merely  pretty  and  con- 
ventional poems.  He  writes  with  the  certainty  of  parental 
praise,  and  without  the  fear  of  parental  or  any  other 
criticism.  He  has  absolutely  no  acquaintance  with  the 
hard  facts  of  life,  such  as  drove  the  iron  deep  into  the 
soul  of  Carlyle,  and  taught  him  to  become  both  law  and 
impulse  to  himself.  No  youth  ever  stood  in  greater  dan- 
ger of  a  life  of  mere  dilettanteism.  There  was  no  urgency 
to  win  his  bread  laid  upon  him,  no  special  preparation 
for  any  profession,  no  diligent  training  with  a  view  to  the 
toils  or  the  prizes  of  a  career.  His  chief  tastes  are,  a  love 
of  nature,  carefully  fed  by  early  and  extensive  travel;  a 
love  of  books,  developed  by  the  best  examples;  and  a  love 
of  art,  which  his  possession  of  means  enabled  him  to 
gratify.  We  do  not  gather  from  any  record  of  his  early 
life  which  we  possess  any  sense  of  great  robustness  either 
of  mind  or  body.  His  youth  was  threatened  by  consump- 
tion, and  his  mind  was  delicate  and  sensitive  rather  than 
profound  or  energetic.  There  is  even  the  trace  of  effemi- 
nacy in  this  early  Ruskin,  the  quite  natural  and  innocent 
effeminacy  of  a  childhood  sheltered  from  the  rough  winds 
of  life,  and  of  a  youth  that  flowers  into  manhood,  not  by 
the  conquest  of  a  barren  soil,  but  by  the  sedulous  assist- 


222      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

ance  of  exotic  horticulture.  As  compared  with  Carlyle, 
with  whom  he  stands  most  closely  associated,  Ruskin 
grows  in  a  hothouse,  while  Carlyle  is  a  product  of  wild 
moor  and  bleak  hillside.  The  one  is  the  child  of  wealth, 
the  other  of  poverty;  the  one  has  a  nature  rich  and  varied, 
the  other  remains  to  the  last  stern  and  narrow  as  the  land 
that  bore  him.  Any  more  unlikely  environment  for  a 
prophet  than  Ruskin 's  it  would  be  difficult,  and  perhaps 
impossible,  to  imagine. 

But  one  gift  Ruskin  had — the  rare  and  superb  gift  of 
fearless  sincerity,  and  it  was  this  gift  that  saved  him  from 
the  perils  of  dilettanteism  and  became  the  dominant  force 
in  the  shaping  of  his  life  and  genius.  He  had  also  a  mind 
of  the  keenest  analytic  quality,  and  an  imagination  alike 
virile  and  sensitive.  It  was  natural  that  in  such  an  en- 
vironment as  his,  his  genius  should  fix  itself  first  of  all 
upon  the  study  of  art.  What  was  art?  Was  it  merely 
a  pleasant  adornment  of  luxurious  life,  or  was  it  in 
itself  an  expression  of  life?  Was  its  true  aim  pleas- 
ure or  truth?  Ruskin  speedily  decided  that  art  was 
serious,  and  not  frivolous,  that  it  had  a  vital  connection 
with  national  character,  and  that  its  one  great  mission  was 
truth.  He  began  to  train  himself  with  infinite  industry 
and  assiduity,  that  he  might  be  in  a  position  to  judge  of 
art  with  justice  and  knowledge.  He  resolved  to  be  led  by 
no  traditions,  but  simply  to  allow  his  sincerity  of  temper 
unimpeded  play,  and  to  abide  by  the  result.  The  discov- 
ery of  the  germ  in  which  all  his  future  teaching  of  art  lay 
was  made  almost  by  accident.  He  had  been  taught  in 
sketching  foliage  to  generalize  it,  and  to  arrange  it  by 
arbitrary  rules  and  on  an  artificial  method.  One  day  he 
sketched  for  himself  a  tree  stem  with  ivy  leaves  upon  it, 


John  Ruskin  223 

and  instantly  perceived  "how  much  finer  it  was  as  a  piece 
of  design  than  any  conventional  rearrangement  would  be." 
All  the  rules  of  artificial  art  in  which  he  had  been  trained 
perished  in  that  simple  discovery.  He  saw  then  that  the 
only  rule  of  any  importance  to  the  artist  was,  ' '  Be  sincere 
with  Nature,  and  take  her  as  she  is,  neither  casually  glan- 
cing at  her  'effects,'  nor  dully  laboring  at  her  parts  with 
the  intention  of  improving  and  blending  them  into  some- 
thing better,  but  taking  her  all  in  all.  On  the  other  hand, 
be  sincere  with  yourself,  knowing  what  you  truly  admire 
and  painting  that,  refusing  the  hyprocrisy  of  any  'grand 
style'  or  'high  art,'  just  as  much  as  you  refuse  to  pander 
to  vulgar  tastes.  And  then  vital  art  is  produced,  and  if 
the  workman  be  a  man  of  great  powers,  great  art."  He 
had  found  a  domain  which  hitherto  no  prophet  had  claimed 
or  touched.  The  mere  painting  of  pictures,  which  to  men 
of  a  narrower  mind,  a  less  refined  training,  or  a  more 
Puritan  temper  might  have  seemed  a  superfluity  of  luxuri- 
ous life,  without  relation  to  the  more  serious  principles  of 
conduct  or  the  progress  of  society,  he  perceived  to  be  an 
essential  element  of  life  and  an  infallible  witness  to  charac- 
ter. He  had  discovered  "that  art,  no  less  than  other 
spheres  of  life,  had  its  heroes;  that  the  mainspring  of 
their  energy  was  sincerity,  and  the  burden  of  their  utter- 
ance truth." 

In  its  moral  aspects  this  principle  is  but  a  rediscovery 
of  the  principle  of  Milton,  that  a  true  poet  must  make  his 
life  a  poem.  It  sounds  a  commonplace,  only  we  have 
need  to  remember  that  nothing  is  so  original  as  a  com- 
monplace when  it  is  genuinely  believed.  But  it  was  not  a 
commonplace  as  Ruskin  uttered  it,  either  to  himself  or  the 
world  he  sought  to  instruct;  so  far  from  this  was  it,  that 


224      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

it  was  felt  to  be  the  enunciation  of  a  new  and  revolution- 
ary principle.  Art  was  in  those  days  in  peril  of  becoming 
a  mere  handicraft.  Its  rules  were  as  the  laws  of  the 
Medes  and  Persians,  which  altered  not.  Given  so  many 
rules,  you  produced  a  picture  with  the  mathematical  cer- 
tainty by  which  two  and  two  make  four.  Mediocre  pic- 
tures were  produced  in  endless  progression,  each  as  like  to 
each  as  though  they  had  been  turned  out  of  a  factory. 
The  greatest  and  most  inspired  artist  of  his  day,  Turner, 
was  the  object  of  rancorous  ridicule,  because  he  was  out- 
raging the  pedantic  traditions  of  artificial  picture-making. 
Ruskin  recalled  men  to  nature  in  art  as  Wordsworth  did 
in  poetry.  He  laid  down  the  rule  that  it  was  the  business 
of  the  artist  to  study  nature  with  humbleness  and  docility, 
"rejecting  nothing,  selecting  nothing,  and  scorning  noth- 
ing." He  laid  down  the  yet  harder  rule  that  the  character 
of  the  artist  has  more  to  do  with  the  making  of  his  art 
than  the  deftness  of  his  hand;  that  a  picture  is  the  record 
of  a  soul,  as  truly  as  of  some  fragment  of  natural  phe- 
nomena; the  rule  of  Milton,  in  fact,  that  the  true  poem  is 
the  product  of  the  true  life,  and  that  great  art  is  impossible 
to  the  man  of  mean  soul.  On  those  two  principles  all  the 
art  criticism  of  Ruskin  is  based.  The  principle  of  the 
return  to  nature  made  him  the  champion  of  Turner  against 
the  world;  and  later  on  led  him  to  the  discovery  of  the 
pre-Raphaelites,  and  the  counsel  "to  paint  things  as  they 
probably  did  look  and  happen,  not  as,  by  the  rules  of  art 
developed  under  Raphael,  they  might  be  supposed  grace- 
fully, deliciously,  or  sublimely  to  have  happened."  The 
principle  of  character  as  the  true  secret  of  art  led  him  to 
the  much  wider  field  of  his  later  literary  labors,  and  the 
fulfillment  of  his  true  prophetic  mission. 


John  Ruskin  225 

I  have  associated,  and  in  part  contrasted,  Ruskin  with 
Carlyle,  and  it  is  a  contrast  which  he  himself  sanctions, 
since  he  has  declared  that  Carlyle  was  his  master,  and  that 
all  his  thinking  has  been  colored  by  Carlyle's  stronger 
thought.  At  first  sight  the  comparison  seems  unsustained 
and  impossible,  for  the  differences  between  the  two  men 
are  clear  to  the  most  casual  observation.  The  genius  of. 
Ruskin  is  subtle,  while  Carlyle  lacks  subtlety;  the  style 
of  Carlyle  is  chaotic,  while  Ruskin's  is  polished  to  the 
utmost  nicety  of  expression;  Carlyle  despised  art,  and 
Ruskin  adored  it;  Carlyle  is  above  all  things  a  humorist, 
while  Ruskin  has  wit  and  satire,  but  no  humor.  Each 
has  vast  powers  of  pugnacity;  but  Carlyle  hurls  the 
thunderbolt,  while  Ruskin  wields  the  rapier.  One  has 
the  energy  of  a  primeval  man,  and  his  limitations;  the 
other  is  the  fine  product  of  a  special  culture.  Yet  in 
moral  temper  they  are  alike,  and  their  criticism  of  life 
agrees.  Each  teaches,  as  a  fundamental  truth,  that  the 
first  duty  of  man  is  to  take  care  of  facts,  and  that  prin- 
ciples will  take  care  of  themselves.  Each  delights  in 
broad  and  vivid  generalization.  Each  is  in  violent  antago- 
nism to  the  main  trend  of  the  age,  and  states  the  ground  of 
his  revolt  with  violence.  It  was  by  the  mere  accident  of 
environment  that  Ruskin  spent  the  first  eagerness  of  his 
genius  on  a  theme  that  Carlyle  could  never  regard  as 
serious;  criticism  of  art  was  from  the  very  first,  with 
him,  criticism  of  life;  and  as  his  genius  grew,  art  fell 
behind  him,  and  life  became  more  and  more. 

How  Ruskin  has  preached  the  gospel  of  sincerity  with 
a  force  inferior  only  to  Carlyle's,  and  with  a  penetrating 
beauty  of  phrase  all  his  own,  we  shall  see  as  we  turn  to 
his  works.  In  the  mean  time  we  should  remember  that, 


226      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

however  wrong-headed  he  may  seem  to  those  who  do  not 
agree  with  him,  he  has  practiced  his  principles,  and  main- 
tained from  first  to  last  an  uncompromising  sincerity.  He 
championed  Turner,  and  bought  his  pictures,  when  Turner 
was  utterly  neglected  by  both  the  patron  and  the  public. 
He  praised  work,  and  no  more  laborious  life  than  his  has 
been  lived  among  us.  He  insists  on  a  mastery  of  facts, 
and  no  artist  ever  put  himself  through  a  more  strenuous 
discipline  to  facts  than  Ruskin,  before  he  considered  him- 
self competent  to  pronounce  judgment  on  the  humblest 
picture.  He  has  advocated  a  wise  simplicity  of  life,  and 
few  lives  have  been  more  gracefully  austere  than  his.  No 
duty  has  been  too  humble,  if  commended  by  a  sense  of 
right;  no  generosity  too  great,  if  it  served  a  wise  purpose 
or  a  public  need.  It  is  the  least  part  of  his  benefactions 
that  of  the  two  hundred  thousand  pounds  left  him  by  his 
father  every  penny  has  long  ago  been  given  away.  He 
has  given  what  is  more  than  money — himself,  his  genius, 
sympathy,  and  service,  as  a  willing  sacrifice  to  his  country- 
men; and  thus  the  gospel  of  sincerity  proclaimed  in  his 
writings  has  been  made  still  more  beautiful  and  convincing 
by  his  life. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  is  the  mission  of  a  prophet  as  illustrated  in  the 
case  of  Ruskin? 

2.  Why  has   Ruskin   frequently    bewildered    his   English 
readers? 

3.  Why  do  others  hold  that  he  "  sees  life  steadily  and  sees 
it  whole"? 

4.  Compare  his  early  life  with  that  of  Carlyle. 

5.  What  qualities  had  he  which  saved  him  from  the  perils 
of  a  life  of  ease? 


John  Ruskin  227 

6.  What  view  of  art  did  he  develop  as  the  result  of  his  in- 
terest in  the  subject? 

7.  What  was  the  condition  of  art  in  England  at  this  time? 

8.  In  what  respects  are  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  different  and 
in  what  alike? 

•     9.  Show  how  Ruskin  practiced  what  he  preached. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PrcEterita.     Outlines  of  My  Past  Life.    John  Ruskin. 

Life  and  Works  of  John  Ruskin.  W.  G.  Collingwood.  2 
vols. 

John  Ruskin :  His  Life  and  Teachings.    J.  Marshall  Mather. 

Records  of  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  and  Browning.  Anne  Thack- 
eray Ritchie. 


CHAPTER    XX 
THE  TEACHING  OF  RUSKIN 

To  arrive  at  an  estimate  of  Ruskin's  temperament  is 
easy;  of  the  nature  and  scope  of  his  teaching  and  phil- 
osophy much  may  be  said.  In  his  art  criticism  we  have 
seen  that  Ruskin  lays  down  the  great  principle  that  sincer- 
ity is  the  mainspring  of  the  artist's  energy,  and  the  burden 
of  his  message  is  truth.  It  may  be  said  that  such  a  defi- 
nition precisely  expresses  his  own  temper.  But  this  is  by 
no  means  an  inclusive  definition.  He  insists  also  with 
Keats,  that  truth  is  beauty,  beauty  is  truth;  and  that  the 
true  artist,  while  not  ignoring  the  facts  of  ugliness,  will 
feel  his  passion  going  out  perpetually  toward  the  fairest 
forms  and  richest  aspects  of  things.  And  it  follows  still 
further,  that  if  truth  is  beauty,  then  falsehood  is  ugliness; 
and  wherever  there  exist  things  that  are  repulsive  and  dis- 
gusting, it  is  because  of  some  outrage  on  truth,  or  some 
fundamental  error  which  an  exacter  conception  of  truth 
would  have  prevented. 

It  needs  no  great  wit  to  see  that  such  a  conclusion  as 
this  involves  every  species  of  social  and  moral  question. 
Let  it  be  applied  in  the  direction  of  art  itself,  and  we  per- 
ceive at  once  that  where  we  have  a  weakly  sensational  or 
a  morally  degraded  art — where  we  have  even  less  than 
this,  an  art  which  is  not  indeed  a  moral  offence,  but  is 
artificial  and  mechanical,  destitute  of  high  imagination 
and  feeling,  wrong  in  its  ideals  and  misguided  in  its 

228 


The  Teaching  of  Ruskin  229 

methods — it  is  simply  because  of  a  fault  or  deficiency  in 
the  artist.  What  is  that  fault?  It  is  lack  of  truth  and 
nobleness  of  moral  temper.  The  greatest  artists  have  not 
always  been  good  or  religious  men,  but  they  have  been 
noble-minded  men.  Their  more  perfect  vision  of  beauty 
is  the  natural  result  of  their  profounder  love  of  truth. 
The  lower  school  of  Dutch  art  is  denounced  by  Ruskin  on 
this  very  ground;  it  lacks  beauty  entirely  because  the 
artists  lacked  the  fine  sense  of  truth.  They  can  paint  the 
coarse  revels  of  the  tavern  with  a  certain  gross  realism, 
but  if  they  had  been  less  of  tavern  roysterers  themselves, 
they  would  have  had  higher  visions  of  truth,  and  so  would 
have  painted  things  that  were  beautiful  instead  of  things 
that  are  repulsive.  It  was  because  they  had  no  thoughts 
that  give  them  any  noble  pleasure,  that  they  relied  on 
sensation  rather  than  imagination  for  the  materials  of  their 
art.  On  the  other  hand,  the  great  Italian  masters  were 
men  of  a  noble  moral  temper;  they  saw  the  higher  aspects 
of  truth,  and  for  that  reason  they  also  reached  a  pecu- 
liarly noble  ideal  of  beauty.  Bad  art,  therefore,  means 
either  a  bad  age  or  an  ignobly  minded  artist;  or  it  may 
mean  both — an  age  that  is  itself  too  gross  to  attain  any  high 
vision  of  truth,  or  to  desire  it,  and  an  artist  who  is  the 
product  of  his  age,  and  acts  in  conformity  with  it. 

Under  one  of  Fra  Angelico's  pictures  is  inscribed  the 
sentence,  "  Painted  at  rest,  praying."  Those  who  look  at 
the  picture  are  scarcely  in  need  of  such  an  explanation. 
There  is  an  infinite  peace  and  spiritual  fervor  in  the  pic- 
ture; it  seems  to  have  captured  in  its  rich  color  a  radiance 
that  is  not  of  this  world,  and  it  is  the  expression  not  merely 
of  the  great  technical  qualities  of  the  artist,  but  also  of 
the  devoutness  of  his  soul,  and  the  virile  purity  and  reach 


230      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

of  his  imagination.  And  this  is  not  an  inapt  illustration 
of  the  truth  that  Ruskin  enforces  continually  in  his  art 
teaching.  To  produce  a  great  picture,  it  is  necessary  not 
merely  for  the  artist  to  prepare  his  canvas,  but  to  prepare 
himself.  If  a  picture  is  not  great,  it  is  because  the  artist 
lacks  moral  and  spiritual  fiber;  and  no  knowledge  of  tech- 
nique, or  laborious  dexterity  of  hand,  can  cover  this  defi- 
ciency. Beauty  of  a  mechanical  or  tumultuous  kind  there 
may  be,  but  never  the  highest  form  of  beauty  without  the 
noblest  passion  for  truth. 

Let  this  principle  be  applied  to  the  general  aspects  of 
national  life,  and  it  is  equally  penetrative  and  infallible. 
Let  it  be  assumed  that  English  cities  of  the  manufacturing 
type  are  squalid  and  repulsive;  that  they  have  no  fine 
order  or  regulated  beauty  of  arrangement;  that  they  have 
no  noble  public  buildings;  or  if  they  have  them,  they  are 
hidden  away  behind  grimy  ranges  of  mean  tenements,  so 
that  their  total  effect  cannot  be  realized  or  discovered — 
and  it  will  be  found  that  this  outward  ugliness  is  the 
natural  witness  to  a  general  contempt  of  truth.  It  is 
generally  assumed  that  Ruskin's  violently  expressed  cen- 
sure of  the  ignoble  grime  of  manufacturing  towns  springs 
from  a  violent  hatred  of  manufacture.  On  the  contrary, 
he  himself  has  established  manufactures,  and  praises  with 
Carlyle  the  great  "captains  of  industry."  But  what  he 
says  is,  that  there  is  no  natural  association  between  manu- 
facture and  ugliness,  and  there  need  be  none.  If  there 
be  a  notorious  violation  of  beauty,  it  is  because  there  has 
been  a  notorious  contempt  for  truth.  What  truth?  The 
truth  that  man  lives  not  by  bread  alone;  that  the  soul  has 
claims  as  well  as  the  stomach;  that  to  make  money  is  in 
itself  the  ignoblest  of  pursuits;  and  that  where  money  is 


The  Teaching  of  Ruskin  23 1 

made  by  the  sacrifice  of  men,  it  is  more  wicked  than  war, 
because  more  deliberately  cruel.  If  there  had  been  any  due 
and  real  sense  of  the  claims  of  the  soul,  as  infinitely  superior 
to  the  claims  of  the  stomach,  England  would  not  have  per- 
mitted her  manufactures  to  thrive  by  the  destruction  of  all 
that  refines  and  ennobles  those  by  whose  toil  this  enor- 
mous wealth  is  created.  If  English  cities  are  ugly,  if 
there  is  not  one  of  them,  nor  altogether,  capable  of  giving 
so  much  delight  to  the  eye  as  the  meanest  mediaeval  Italian 
town  could  furnish,  it  is  because  we  have  been  too  ab- 
sorbed in  the  ignoble  haste  to  be  rich  to  care  for  anything 
but  the  condition  of  our  bank-books.  It  is  not  manufac- 
tures that  are  wrong,  but  the  spirit  in  which  they  are  con- 
ducted. Those  who  administer  them  have  notoriously 
departed  from  truth  in  the  essential  methods  of  their 
administration.  They  have  not  sought  to  provide  an 
honest  article  for  an  honest  wage.  They  have  had  no 
pride  in  their  work,  but  only  a  base  pleasure  in  its  rewards. 
They  have  not  asked,  "Is  this  thing  that  I  have  made  as 
sound  and  efficient  a  thing  as  it  is  possible  for  me  to  pro- 
duce?" but  "Have  I  produced  something  that  will  pay, 
and  something  calculated  cunningly  to  deceive  the  eye,  so 
that  I  may  obtain  a  larger  payment  for  it  than  I  have 
justly  earned  or  have  any  right  to  expect?"  No  wonder 
manufacturing  towns  are  ugly  and  squalid  when  they  are 
governed  and  created  by  men  of  this  spirit;  how  could 
you  reasonably  expect  them  to  be  beautiful?  There  has 
been  a  contempt  for  truth,  and  there  is  a  corresponding 
contempt  for  beauty.  Before  England  can  be  a  land  of 
beautiful  cities,  it  must  be  renewed  in  its  ideals,  and  must 
regain  that  reverence  for  truth  which  it  has  lost. 

The  only  final  strength  is  Tightness,  says  Ruskin;  and 


232      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

excellence,  whether  of  art  or  of  character,  can  only  be 
achieved  by  an  unswerving  fidelity  to  right.  A  contempt 
of  beauty  means  more  than  a  lack  of  aesthetic  taste  in  a 
man's  nature:  it  means  necessarily  a  contempt  of  right, 
since  beauty  is  the  concrete  final  expression  of  Tightness. 
Venice  rose  from  the  sea  in  stern  yet  exquisite  grandeur 
of  form,  because  the  race  that  laid  its  stones  deep  in  the 
shallow  waters  of  the  lagoons  were  for  centuries  a  great 
and  noble  race,  disciplined  into  strenuous  hardihood  by 
the  nature  of  their  perilous  position,  virtuous  by  their 
passion  for  liberty,  great  in  soul  by  their  reverence  for 
truth.  The  period  of  their  decline  is  marked  in  the  cor- 
ruption of  their  architecture,  and  the  dream  of  beauty 
lessens  as  the  people  wax  debased.  It  is  useless,  says 
Ruskin,  to  ask  for  men  like  Tintoret  or  churches  like  St. 
Mark's  in  a  day  when  manufacture  prospers  by  jugglery, 
and  trade  is  an  organized  deceit;  we  ask  for  the  blossom 
on  the  tree,  forgetting  that  its  stem  is  cut,  and  its  root 
withered.  You  will  get  sound  workmanship  in  no  depart- 
ment of  life  when  honesty  and  truth  have  ceased  to  com- 
mand respect;  and  since  beauty  is  Tightness,  you  will  not 
get  beauty  either.  The  jerry-builder  is  simply  the  natural 
and  inevitable  product  of  an  avaricious  and  corrupt  age. 
He  is  the  parasite  of  a  decaying  civilization,  at  once 
springing  from  the  decay  and  propagating  it.  Had 
Venice  been  built  by  men  whose  one  passion  was  money, 
and  whose  one  evil  gift  was  a  minute  and  absolute  mastery 
of  the  art  of  cheating,  we  should  have  had  a  stucco  St. 
Mark's,  which  long  ago  had  sunk  unregretted  in  the  tides 
from  which  it  rose.  An  unstable  people  does  not  build 
stable  and  enduring  works,  but  after  its  kind,  unstable 
erections,  only  meant  to  last  as  long  as  money  can  be 


The  Teaching  of  Ruskin  233 

made  by  them.  The  age  of  cathedral  building  was  natu- 
rally the  age  when  belief  in  God  was  an  intelligible  factor 
in  human  conduct,  and  when  the  imaginations  of  men 
were  fed  by  solemn  and  eternal  visions  of  truth.  But 
when  we  build  churches  we  build  them  by  contract, 
accepting  the  lowest  tender,  and  we  are  utterly  indifferent 
to  the  quality  of  the  work,  so  long  as  we  get  something 
showy  for  our  money.  All  the  bad  building  that  goes  on 
in  our  civic  centers  is  therefore,  like  the  bad  art  of  our 
time,  simply  the  outward  witness  to  an  inward  corruption 
of  the  conscience.  There  is  only  one  remedy,  says  Rus- 
kin: "No  religion  that  ever  was  preached  on  this  earth  of 
God's  rounding  will  proclaim  any  salvation  to  sellers  of 
bad  goods.  If  the  ghost  that  is  in  you,  whatever  the 
essence  of  it,  leaves  your  hand  a  juggler's  and  your  heart 
a  cheat's,  it  is  not  a  Holy  Ghost,  be  assured  of  that. 
And  for  the  rest,  all  political  economy,  as  well  as  all 
higher  virtue,  depends  first  on  sound  work." 

To  obtain,  therefore,  fine  art  or  noble  architecture, 
according  to  the  gospel  of  Ruskin,  means  an  entire  reor- 
ganization of  commerce,  and  a  renewal  of  the  whole  nation 
in  righteousness.  And  this  means  a  renewal  in  honesty, 
a  word  whose  meaning  is  almost  lost  in  the  dim-sighted- 
ness  bred  of  universal  chicanery  and  fraud.  Thus,  by 
what  is  after  all  no  feat  of  intellectual  acrobatics,  but  a 
calmly  reasoned  and  intelligent  process,  Ruskin  passes 
from  the  consideration  of  the  ethics  of  art  and  architec- 
ture to  the  creation  of  a  new  and  radical  political  economy. 

What,  then,  is  the  chief  burden  of  Ruskin's  ethical  and 
social  teaching?  He  lays  down,  first  of  all,  the  absolute 
duty  of  work,  and  of  work  which,  as  far  as  possible, 
absorbs  the  full  interest,  and  excites  the  inventive  faculty 


234      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

of  the  worker.  The  great  evil  of  modern  civilization  is 
"not  that  men  are  ill  fed,  but  that  they  have  no  pleasure 
in  the  work  by  which  they  make  their  bread,  and  ther  ore 
look  to  wealth  as  the  only  means  of  pleasure."  Now,  the 
workmen  who  built  St.  Mark's,  or  any  great  English 
cathedral,  were,  beyond  doubt,  far  worse  fed  than  our 
modern  workmen;  but  their  work  was  a  pleasure  to  them, 
because  they  put  into  it  such  intelligence  of  soul  as  they 
possessed,  and  therefore  it  is  good  and  stable  work.  The 
general  thirst  for  wealth  really  means,  therefore,  a  dis- 
taste for  honest  labor,  and  the  resolve  to  escape  labor  by 
the  readiest  means  in  our  power.  But  why  has  the  work- 
man no  pleasure  in  his  work?  Partly  because  we  have 
destroyed  the  possibility  of  pleasure  by  what  we  call 
division  of  labor,  and  so  rendered  the  exercise  of  thought 
and  intelligence  unnecessary.  "It  is  not,  truly  speaking, 
the  labor  which  is  divided,  but  the  men :  divided  into  mere 
segments  of  men — broken  into  small  fragments  and 
crumbs  of  life;  so  that  all  the  little  piece  of  intelligence 
that  is  left  in  a  man  is  not  enough  to  make  a  pin  or  a  nail, 
but  exhausts  itself  in  making  the  point  of  a  pin  or  the  head 
of  a  nail."  This  is  really  the  ground  of  Ruskin's  antago- 
nism to  machine-made  goods,  and  his  strong  preference 
for  goods  made  by  hand;  the  latter  are  the  product  of 
intelligence,  and  work  that  has  pleasure  in  its  act,  and  the 
former  are  not;  the  one  work  develops  men,  the  other 
divides  and  enslaves  them. 

He  then  gives  his  standard  of  wages  in  three  principles, 
which  to  all  men  of  just  and  honorable  minds  will  appear 
self-evident  and  imperative.  First,  men  should  be  paid 
for  the  actual  work  done;  secondly,  "a  man  should  in 
justice  be  paid  for  difficult  or  dangerous  work  proportion- 


The  Teaching  of  Ruskin 

O 

ately  more  than  for  easy  and  safe  work,  supposing  the 
other  conditions  of  the  work  similar";  thirdly,  "if  a  man 
does  a  given  quantity  of  work  for  me,  I  am  bound  in 
justice  to  do,  or  procure  to  be  done,  a  precisely  equal 
quantity  of  work  for  him;  and  just  trade  in  labor  is  the 
exchange  of  equivalent  quantities  of  labor  of  different 
kinds."  Thus  the  employer  of  labor  is  himself  a  laborer, 
giving,  in  exchange  for  work  done  for  him,  another  kind 
of  work  done  for  those  who  serve  under  him.  The  fac- 
tory worker  is  not  "a  hand,"  but  a  man,  and  it  is  the 
bounden  duty  of  his  employer  to  see  that  he  has  a  fair 
share  of  food,  and  warmth  and  comfort,  and  a  reasonable 
opportunity  of  attending  to  the  wants  of  his  mind  and  the 
culture  of  his  soul.  His  claim  is  not,  and  never  can  be, 
settled  adequately  by  any  award  of  money;  his  employer 
is  also  responsible  for  the  nature  of  his  life.  If  the  indi- 
vidual employer  is  too  callous  or  indifferent  to  attend  to 
these  responsibilities,  then  it  is  the  business  of  the  state  to 
step  in,  and  force  upon  the  avaricious  and  foolish  master 
the  instant  attendance  to  his  duties.  Indeed,  in  almost 
all  that  concerns  trade,  Ruskin  advocates  what  we  under- 
stand as  State  Socialism.  He  would  have  either  the 
trade-guild  or  the  state  fix  a  standard  of  excellence  for  all 
manufactured  articles.  The  public  would  soon  discover 
that  it  was  all  the  better  off  by  buying  a  sound  article, 
and  the  craze  for  mere  cheapness  would  die  with  the  dis- 
covery that  the  cheap  thing  is,  in  the  long  run,  the  dear- 
est, being  worthless  at  any  price.  Moreover,  such  a  wise 
interference  by  the  state,  if  all  states  would  unite  in  its 
enforcement,  would,  in  the  end,  kill  the  demon  of  com- 
petition, which  is  the  curse  of  commerce.  "The  primal 
and  eternal  law  of  vital  commerce  shall  be  of  all  men 


236      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

understood;  namely,  that  every  nation  is  fitted  by  its 
character,  and  the  nature  of  its  territories,  for  some  par- 
ticular employments  or  manufactures;  and  that  it  is  the 
true  interest  of  every  other  nation  to  encourage  it  in  such 
speciality,  and  by  no  means  to  interfere  with,  but  in  all 
ways  forward  and  protect,  its  efforts,  ceasing  all  rivalship 
with  it,  so  soon  as  it  is  strong  enough  to  occupy  its  proper 
place."  The  one  necessary  principle  for  all  honorable 
and  efficient  trade  is  thus  seen  to  be  co-operation.  First 
of  all,  between  the  employers  and  the  employed,  each 
honestly  working  to  serve  the  public  by  the  production  of 
the  best  possible  article;  and  then  between  nations,  each 
separate  people  producing  what  it  can  produce  best,  for 
the  general  international  good. 

It  will,  of  course,  be  said,  that  under  such  a  system  as 
this  no  large  fortunes  could  be  made;  but  equally  it  is 
true  that  nine-tenths  of  our  want  and  misery  would  disap- 
pear, the  other  tenth  being  that  caused  by  vice  and  im- 
providence, which  no  state  can  remove  so  long  as  man 
has  the  right  to  ruin  himself.  The  question  is,  How  are 
large  fortunes  made,  and  by  what  methods,  under  the 
existing  system?  Ruskin  replies  that  such  fortunes  as  are 
the  prizes  of  commerce  can  only  be  made  in  one  of  three 
ways :  I .  By  obtaining  command  over  the  labor  of  mul- 
titudes of  other  men,  and  taxing  it  for  our  own  profit; 
2.  By  treasure-trove,  as  of  mines,  useful  vegetable 
products,  and  the  like — in  circumstances  putting  them 
under  our  own  exclusive  control;  3.  By  speculation 
(commercial  gambling).  Ruskin  categories  these  three 
methods  under  the  scathing  title  of  "The  nature  of  theft 
by  unjust  profits,"  and  after  explaining  by  what  means 


The  Teaching  of  Ruskin  237 

such  dishonest  acquisition  is  accomplished,  asks  us  to 
"consider  further,  how  many  of  the  carriages  that  glitter 
in  our  streets  are  driven,  and  how  many  of  the  stately 
houses  that  gleam  among  our  English  fields  are  inhabited, 
by  this  kind  of  thief!"  His  remedy  for  the  first  kind  of 
theft  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  just  system  of  co-operation; 
and  while  no  remedy  is  stated  for  the  second,  yet  the  plain 
suggestion  is  the  nationalization  of  mines  and  mineral 
treasure  generally,  as  the  property  of  the  state,  to  be 
administered  for  the  good  of  all.  Of  the  third  form  of 
theft  his  words  are  unmistakably  stern  and  incisive;  "for 
in  all  cases  of  profit  derived  from  speculation,  at  best, 
what  one  man  gains  another  loses;  and  the  net  result  to 
the  state  is  zero  (pecuniarily),  with  the  loss  of  time  and 
ingenuity  spent  in  the  transaction;  beside  the  disadvan- 
tage involved  in  the  discouragement  of  the  losing  party, 
and  the  corrupted  moral  natures  of  both." 

And  beyond  all  this,  Ruskin  teaches  that  great  fortunes 
are  rarely  a  blessing  to  their  possessors,  and  the  truly  for- 
tunate man  is  he  whose  wealth  is  in  the  limitation  of  his 
lower  desires,  and  the  extension  of  his  higher  aspirations. 
The  gospel  of  plain  living  and  high  thinking  is  after  all  a 
possible  gospel,  within  the  reach  of  all.  The  love  of 
money  is  the  root  of  all  the  evil  in  our  modern  life.  It  is 
right  that  work  should  be  honestly  remunerated ;  but  if  we 
love  the  fee  more  than  the  work,  then  fee  is  our  master, 
"and  the  lord  of  fee,  who  is  the  Devil."  The  true 
advancement  of  men  must  begin  in  the  heart  and  con- 
science, and  it  is  because  England  has  grown  in  wealth, 
but  not  in  character,  that  we  have  side  by  side  the  prodi- 
gality of  the  rich  and  the  want  of  the  poor;  and  having 


23 8      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

regard  to  the  first  alone,  persuade  ourselves  that  we  live 
in  an  era  of  unexampled  prosperity,  and  are  blind  to  the 
realities  of  unexampled  corruption  and  materialism.  We 
have  yet  to  learn  the  art  of  wise  and  noble  living;  and 
"what  is  chiefly  needed  in  England  at  the  present  day  is 
to  show  the  quantity  of  pleasure  that  may  be  obtained  by 
a  consistent,  well-administered  competence,  modest,  con- 
fessed, and  laborious.  We  need  examples  of  people  who, 
leaving  heaven  to  decide  whether  they  are  to  rise  in  the 
world,  decide  for  themselves  whether  they  will  be  happy 
in  it,  and  have  resolved  to  seek,  not  greater  wealth,  but 
simpler  pleasure;  not  higher  fortune,  but  deeper  felicity; 
making  the  first  of  possession  self-possession;  and  honor- 
ing themselves  in  the  harmless  pride  and  calm  pursuits  of 
peace."  These  are  truly  prophetic  words,  and  contain 
not  only  the  counsel  of  a  great  thinker,  but  of  a  true 
patriot. 

QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  moral  qualities  did  Ruskin  associate  with  beauty 
and  ugliness? 

2.  What  did  he  consider  were  the  causes  of  bad  art? 

3.  How  did  he  apply  these  principles  to  the  ugliness  of 
cities? 

4.  What  did  he  teach  concerning  the  spirit  in  which  busi- 
ness should  be  carried  on? 

5.  How  does  the  architecture  of  Venice  illustrate  the  char- 
acter of  the  Venetians? 

6.  What  similar  truth  is  suggested  by  the  great  cathedrals? 

7.  What  does    Ruskin    teach    concerning   the    duty  and 
pleasure  of  work? 

8.  What  responsibility  did  he  place  upon  the  employer  of 
labor? 

9.  How  did  he  look  upon  competition  and  commerce? 


The  Teaching  of  Ruskin  239 

10.  What  remedies  does  he  suggest  for  the  three  means 
employed  by  men  to  accumulate  great  wealth? 

11.  What  does  he  teach  concerning  man's  true  relation  to 
wealth? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Lessons  from  My  Masters  (Carlyle,  Tennyson,  and  Ruskin). 
Peter  Bayne. 

Three  Great  Teachers  of  Our  Time.    A.  H.  Japp. 
John  Ruskin :  Economist.     Patrick  Geddes. 
Poets  and  Problems.    George  Willis  Cooke. 


CHAPTER    XXI 
RUSKIN'S  IDEAL  OF  WOMEN 

No  summary  of  Ruskin's  teaching  would  be  complete 
without  reference  to  the  more  poetical  side  of  his  genius; 
and  since  it  is  necessary  to  quote  some  concrete  example, 
we  can  scarcely  find  a  better  than  that  section  of  his  writ- 
ings which  deals  specifically  with  the  place  assigned  to 
woman  in  his  new  Utopia.  For  him,  as  for  all  really 
great  writers  and  thinkers,  woman  has  held  a  high  place, 
and  been  a  commanding  influence.  But  one  can  no  more 
describe  in  a  sentence  what  is  Ruskin's  ideal  woman  than 
what  is  his  ideal  of  art,  for  in  all  his  writing  he  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  alternately  reactionary  and  progressive,  and  at 
all  times  a  mystic,  whose  perceptions  are  colored  by  a 
singularly  grave  and  noble  imagination.  That  he  would 
not  accept  all  the  theories  of  female  emancipation  which 
are  current  to-day  is  clear  from  the  most  casual  acquaint- 
ance with  his  drift  of  thought,  and  in  this  he  may  be 
deemed  reactionary.  But  the  reaction  on  its  rebound 
really  becomes  a  very  large  measure  of  progression.  He 
goes  back  to  the  more  ancient  ideals  of  womanly  modesty, 
humility,  and  service,  only  to  link  them  afresh  to  all  that 
is  highest  in  the  aims  of  modern  life.  And  nowhere  is  his 
mysticism — the  mysticism  of  the  lover  and  the  thinker, 
reverent  and  sweet  and  beautiful — more  pronounced  than 
in  his  treatment  of  woman.  In  Ruskin  himself  there  is  a 
certain  feminine  element  that  perhaps  enables  him  to  judge 

240 


Ruskin's  Ideal  of  Women  241 

woman  with  a  finer  delicacy  and  more  accurate  eye  than 
belong  to  most  men;  certainly  with  a  graver  sympathy 
and  more  chivalrous  regard. 

Every  one  who  has  read  the  lecture  on  "Queen's 
Gardens"  in  Sesame  and  the  Lilies  will  remember  the 
series  of  fine  passages  in  which  Ruskin  points  out  how 
reverence  for  womanhood  has  been  the  master  note  in  the 
rich  music  of  the  greatest  poets.  We  cannot  do  better 
than  recall  these  passages  if  we  would  understand  his  own 
ideal  of  womanhood.  Broadly  speaking,  he  says,  Shake- 
speare has  no  heroes — he  has  only  heroines.  The  one 
entirely  heroic  figure  in  the  plays — and  this  is  after  all  but 
a  slight  sketch — is  Henry  V.  And  then  he  continues: 
"Coriolanus,  Caesar,  Anthony,  stand  in  flawed  strength, 
and  fall  by  their  vanities;  Hamlet  is  indolent  and  drowsily 
speculative;  Romeo  an  impatient  boy;  the  Merchant  of 
Venice  languidly  submissive  to  adverse  fortune;  Kent,  in 
King  Lear,  is  entirely  noble  at  heart,  but  too  rough  and 
unpolished  to  be  of  true  use  at  the  critical  time,  and  he 

sinks  into  the  office  of  a  servant  only Whereas 

there  is  hardly  a  play  that  has  not  a  perfect  woman  in  it, 
steadfast  in  grave  hope  and  errorless  purpose;  Cordelia, 
Desdemona,  Isabella,  Hermione,  Imogen,  Queen  Cather- 
ine, Perdita,  Sylvia,  Viola,  Rosalind,  Helena,  and  last, 
and  perhaps  loveliest,  Virgilia,  are  all  faultless,  conceived 
in  the  highest  heroic  type  of  humanity."  Of  course  the 
mind  will  also  recall  the  dread  figure  of  Lady  Macbeth, 
and  the  revolting  hard-heartedness  of  Regan  and  Goneril; 
but  these,  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  were  clearly  meant  by  Shake- 
speare to  be  frightful  exceptions  to  the  ordinary  aspects  of 
life.  And  as  it  was  with  Shakespeare,  so  it  was  with 
Walter  Scott,  with  Dante,  with  the  great  Greeks,  and  with 


242.      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

our  own  Chaucer  and  Spenser.  Wherever  woman  is 
pictured,  it  is  in  the  bright  strength  of  her  truth  and  purity, 
her  constancy  and  virtue.  Chaucer  writes  his  Legend  of 
Good  Women,  and  Spenser  makes  it  clear  to  us  how  easily 
the  best  of  his  faery  knights  may  be  deceived  and  van- 
quished; "  but  the  soul  of  Una  is  never  darkened,  and  the 
spear  of  Britomart  is  never  broken."  This  view  of  woman 
is  one  which  Mr.  Ruskin  indorses  and  amplifies.  He  be- 
lieves in  the  old  Teutonic  reverence  for  women  as  the 
prophets  of  society,  "as  infallibly  faithful  and  wise  coun- 
selors, incorruptibly  just  and  pure  examples — strong 
always  to  sanctify  even  where  they  cannot  save";  and  he 
shows  with  completeness  of  illustration  that  the  greatest 
men  have  believed  in  this  ideal  of  womanhood,  and  that 
this  belief  has  shaped  and  colored  all  that  is  noblest  in  the 
poetic  literature  of  the  world. 

Starting  from  this  noble  ideal  of  what  woman  may  be, 
Ruskin  works  out  the  details  of  his  picture  with  great  art 
and  fidelity.  He  will  hear  of  no  "superiority"  between 
the  sexes,  of  no  obedience  demanded  by  the  one  as  the 
prerogative  of  sex,  or  rendered  by  the  other  as  its  con- 
dition. Woman  was  certainly  not  meant  to  be  the  attend- 
ant shadow  of  her  lord,  serving  him  with  a  thoughtless 
and  servile  obedience;  for  how  could  he  be  "helped 
effectually  by  a  shadow,  or  worthily  by  slave"?  And  as 
for  "superiority,"  in  what  does  superiority  lie?  For  any 
true  comparison  there  must  be  similarity,  whereas  between 
man  and  woman  there  is  eternal  dissimilarity.  They  can 
be  neither  equal  nor  unequal  who  have  wholly  different 
gifts,  and  are  intrusted  with  widely  various  functions. 
"Each  has  what  the  other  has  not;  each  completes  the 
other,  and  is  completed  by  the  other;  they  are  in  nothing 


Ruskin's  Ideal  of  Women  243 

alike,  and  the  happiness  and  perfection  of  both  depend 
on  each  asking  and  receiving  from  the  other  what  the 
other  only  can  give."  Yet,  however  radical  are  the  differ- 
ences, simply  because  each  is  the  complement  of  the 
other,  their  cause  is  one,  and  the  mission  and  rights  of 
women  cannot  be  separated  from  the  mission  and  rights 
of  men.  This  is  simply  a  prose  statement  of  the  phil- 
osophy which  Tennyson  has  interpreted  in  memorable 
verse  when  he  says: 

For  woman  is  not  undevelopt  man, 
But  diverse:  could  we  make  her  as  the  man, 
Sweet  love  were  slain;  his  bond  is  this, 
Not  like  to  like,  but  like  in  difference. 

The  woman's  cause  is  man's;  they  rise  or  sink 
Together,  dwarfed  or  godlike,  bond  or  free. 

To  the  more  ardent  and  inconsiderate  spirits  in .  the 
modern  revolt  of  woman,  all  this  may  seem  somewhat 
antiquated  philosophy  nowadays.  Those  who  are  loudest 
in  proclaiming  the  advance  of  women  sometimes  talk  as  if 
they  would  be  content  with  no  advance  that  did  not  sub- 
merge man,  or  which  at  least  surrendered  the  claim  of 
absolute  equality  to  woman.  And  such  women  will  prob- 
ably resent  the  stress  which  Ruskin  lays  upon  man's  fitness 
for  the  world,  and  woman's  fitness  for  the  household. 
They  will  not  care  to  admit  that  "man's  power  is  active, 
progressive,  defensive.  He  is  eminently  the  doer,  the 
creator,  the  discoverer,  the  defender.  His  intellect  is  for 
speculation  and  invention;  his  energy  for  adventure,  for 
war,  for  conquest,  wherever  war  is  just,  wherever  con- 
quest necessary.  But  the  woman's  power  is  for  rule,  not 
for  battle;  and  her  intellect  is  not  for  invention  or  crea- 


244      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

tion,  but  for  sweet  ordering,  arrangement,  decision."  Yet 
it  may  be  well  even  for  the  most  advanced  woman  to  ask 
whether  Tennyson  and  Ruskin  have  not  the  truth  with  them, 
and  whether  she  would  not  lose  far  more  than  she  could 
gain  by  scornfully  rejecting  the  programme  each  assigns 
her.  For  it  is  in  the  domain  of  the  emotions  that  Ruskin 
makes  woman  supreme.  The  man,  in  his  conflict  with 
the  world,  is  sure  to  be  hardened;  but  it  is  his  business  to 
guard  the  woman  against  this  hardening  of  the  heart,  and 
her  work  is  to  soften  and  purify  the  man  by  the  strength 
of  her  emotions  and  the  joy  of  her  affection.  The  harden- 
ing of  the  heart  is  a  doleful  and  disastrous  process,  which 
we  see  going  on  around  us  every  day,  and  perhaps  also 
perceive  within  us.  We  accept  the  responsibility  for 
training  the  mind,  but  we  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  train 
and  educate  the  emotions.  More  than  this,  we  English 
people  are  for  the  most  part  ashamed  of  our  emotions,  and 
take  a  pride  in  repressing  them,  so  that  equally  in  Europe 
and  America  we  are  regarded  as  the  coldest  and  most 
phlegmatic  of  races.  It  is,  no  doubt,  not  well  to  wear  the 
heart  upon  the  sleeve,  but  it  is  still  worse  to  repress  the 
emotions  until  they  become  sterile,  and  the  very  power  of 
feeling  dies  in  us.  For  the  Englishman,  the  home  is  the 
one  secure  asylum  where  he  permits  his  heart  to  beat 
freely,  and  for  that  reason  we,  more  than  most  peoples, 
should  reverence  women  as  the  queens  of  the  heart,  whose 
work  it  is  to  liberate  in  the  home  the  emotions  that  have 
been  repressed  in  the  world.  Home  is  the  place  of  peace, 
the  sanctuary  of  the  heart,  the  realm  wherein  the  emotions 
may  find  free  air  and  unimpeded  action;  it  is,  as  Ruskin 
nobly  says,  roof  and  fire,  shelter  and  warmth,  shade  and 
light — "Shade  as  of  the  rock  in  a  weary  land,  and  light  as 


Ruskin's  Ideal  of  Women  245 

of  the  Pharos  in  the  stormy  sea."  And  in  such  a  home 
it  is  the  part  of  woman  to  be  enduringly,  incorruptibly 
good;  instinctively,  infallibly  wise — wise,  not  for  self- 
development,  but  for  self-renunciation;  wise,  not  that  she 
may  set  herself  above  her  husband,  but  that  she  may 
never  fail  from  his  side;  wise,  not  with  the  narrowness  of 
insolent  and  loveless  pride,  but  with  the  passionate  gentle- 
ness of  an  infinitely  variable,  because  infinitely  applicable, 
modesty  of  service — the  true  changefulness  of  woman." 
"Wise,  not  for  self-development,  but  for  self-renunci- 
ation," this  again  will  sound  like  a  note  of  reaction,  and 
will  be  distasteful  to  many  noble  souls  who  toil  heroically 
for  the  advance  of  woman.  Yet  the  whole  evil  is  in  the 
sound — there  is  no  error  in  the  sentiment.  If  morality  is 
more  than  culture,  if  to  be  is  better  than  to  know,  if  char- 
acter is  a  more  precious  gain  than  even  knowledge,  then 
it  is  clear  that  self-renunciation,  by  which  the  flower  of 
the  soul  is  brought  to  fullness,  is  a  nobler  gain  than  self- 
development,  by  which  the  mind  is  trained  to  alert  activity 
and  the  body  to  athletic  vigor.  But  what  Ruskin  means 
by  self-development  is  the  development  of  selfishness,  just 
as  by  self-renunciation  he  means  the  subdual  of  self,  and 
its  suppression.  Certainly  he  does  not  mean  that  the 
weapons  of  intellectual  growth  or  physical  culture  are  to 
be  denied  to  women.  On  the  contrary,  he  declares  that 
the  first  duty  of  society  to  women  is  "to  secure  for  her 
such  physical  training  and  exercise  as  may  confirm  her 
health  and  perfect  her  beauty";  and  again,  that  "all  such 
knowledge  should  be  given  her  as  may  enable  her  to 
understand,  and  even  to  aid,  the  work  of  man."  In  this 
latter  respect  Ruskin  may  be  claimed  as  one  of  the  pio- 
neers of  the  higher  education  of  women.  In  1864,  when 


246      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

these  words  were  uttered,  there  were  not  many  men  who 
ventured  to  claim  a  perfect  equality  of  education  for  men 
and  women;  but  this  Ruskin  does  with  passionate  plead- 
ing, nor  is  there  any  passage  of  satire  in  his  writings  more 
telling  than  that  in  which  he  contrasts  the  education 
afforded  to  a  boy  with  that  thought  sufficient  for  a  girl. 
He  says  that  at  least  you  show  some  respect  for  the  tutor 
of  your  son,  and  you  teach  your  son  to  respect  him.  You 
do  not  treat  the  dean  of  Christ  Church  or  the  master  of 
Trinity  as  your  inferiors.  But  you  intrust  the  entire  for- 
mation of  a  girl's  "character,  moral  and  intellectual,  to  a 
person  whom  you  let  your  servants  treat  with  less  respect 
than  they  do  your  housekeeper  (as  if  the  soul  of  your 
child  were  a  less  charge  than  jam  and  groceries),  and 
whom  you  yourself  think  you  confer  an  honor  upon  by 
letting  her  sometimes  sit  in  the  drawing-room  in  the  even- 
ing."  Mr.  Ruskin 's  ideal  woman  is  clearly  no  creature 
of  unfurnished  mind,  meek  with  the  meekness  of  igno- 
rance, subservient  with  the  humility  of  self-distrust:  she 
is  the  highest  product  of  both  physical  and  mental  culture, 
and  is  fitted  to  sit  with  man  in  equal  comradeship — 

Full-summed  in  all  their  powers, 
Dispensing  harvest,  sowing  the  To-Be. 

Ruskin's  ideal  of  woman  includes,  therefore,  a  very  full 
trust  in  those  moral  instincts  which  he  regards  as  her 
highest  gift,  and  in  the  unimpeded  exercise  of  which  he 
discerns  her  noblest  power.  He  claims  for  her  the  largest 
liberty,  because  she  is  far  less  likely  than  man  to  abuse 
her  liberty.  He  goes  so  far  as  to  declare  that  nature  in 
her  is  to  be  trusted  far  more  than  in  men  to  do  its  own 
work,  and  to  do  it  beautifully  and  beneficently.  The  boy 
may  be  chiseled  into  shape,  but  the  girl  must  take  her 


Ruskin's  Ideal  of  Women  247 

own  way,  and  will  grow  as  a  flower  grows.  The  boy, 
needs  discipline  before  he  will  learn  what  is  good  for  him; 
but  the  girl,  if  she  trust  her  instincts,  will  be  infallibly 
guided  to  what  is  good  around  her,  without  any,  save  the 
slightest,  pressure  from  extraneous  authority.  Thus  Mr. 
Ruskin  advocates  in  a  well-known  passage  the  wisdom  of 
letting  a  girl  pretty  much  alone  in  the  choice  of  her  read- 
ing, so  long  as  the  mere  ephemeral  "package  of  the  circu- 
lating library,  wet  with  the  last  and  lightest  spray  of  the 
fountain  of  folly,"  is  kept  out  of  her  way.  "Turn  her 
loose  into  the  old  library,"  he  says,  "and  let  her  alone. 

She  will  find  what  is  good  for  her,  and  you  cannot 

Let  her  loose  in  the  library,  I  say,  as  you  do  a  fawn  in  a 
field.  It  knows  the  bad  weeds  twenty  times  better  than 
you,  and  the  good  ones  too,  and  will  eat  some  bitter  and 
prickly  ones,  good  for  it,  which  you  had  not  the  slightest 
thought  were  good." 

This  is  an  heroic  form  of  education,  indeed,  but  in 
Ruskin's  view  it  is  the  best  form,  simply  because  he  has 
unbounded  faith  in  the  wise  intuition  and  invincible  purity 
of  true  womanhood.  He  believes  with  George  Meredith 
that  woman  lies  nearer  to  the  heart  of  nature  than  man, 
and  is  a  creature  of  altogether  surer  and  wiser  instinct. 
There  is  a  sweet,  old-fashioned  chivalry  in  this  doctrine, 
of  which  we  hear  little  to-day.  It  is  characteristic  of  the 
man.  Simple  himself  as  a  child,  pure  and  sweet-natured 
as  a  child,  he  feels  something  of  that  reverent  worship  for 
woman  which  was  the  soul  of  ancient  chivalry;  and  no 
woman  can  read  his  writings  without  a  fresh  and  happy 
sense  of  her  own  endowments,  and  a  new  and  high  ideal 
of  how  these  can  be  best  applied  for  the  service  of  the 
world. 


248      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

We  are  all  hot  for  emancipation  to-day.  Ruskin  bids 
us  inquire  what  such  emancipation  really  means.  He 
reminds  us  that  womanhood  may  be  emancipated  in  so 
rough  and  wrong  a  fashion  that  the  bloom  of  virgin  grace 
may  be  wasted  in  the  process,  and  the  true  charm  of 
womanhood  may  perish.  An  emancipation  which  corrupts 
the  delicacy  of  the  soul,  or  dulls  the  sensitiveness  of  the 
emotions,  is  a  fatal  error,  for  which  no  gain  of  worldly 
shrewdness  or  mental  acumen  can  be  any  just  or  appre- 
ciable recompense.  It  is  in  her  power  of  sympathy,  of 
kindness,  of  all  fine  and  tender  feeling,  that  woman's  true 
strength  lies,  and  any  diminution  here  is  not  only  to  her  a 
fatal  detriment,  but  it  is  a  boundless  loss  inflicted  on  soci- 
ety. To  learn  to  feel,  or  to  keep  in  unspent  freshness  the 
power  to  feel,  is  for  woman  of  far  greater  moment  than 
to  learn  to  know,  or  to  learn  to  achieve  some  poor  battle 
in  the  clamorous  strifes  of  a  callous  world.  There  is  a 
higher  thing  than  to  speak  with  tongues,  or  to  know  all 
mysteries,  and  that  is  to  love  with  the  love  that  thinketh 
no  evil,  that  rejoiceth  in  the  truth,  that  beareth  all  things, 
believeth  all  things,  hopeth  all  things,  endureth  all  things. 
This  is  the  essence  of  Ruskin's  ideal  womanhood.  Noth- 
ing that  ought  to  be  shared  with  man  will  he  deny  her,  but 
he  insists  that  there  are  many  things  she  need  not  wish  to 
share,  because  she  is  the  mistress  of  a  larger  wealth  which 
is  hidden  in  her  own  soul.  To  know  how  to  love  truly, 
to  feed  the  sacred  flame  of  love  which  is  the  glory  of  the 
world,  to  soften  the  asperities  of  life  with  her  charity,  and 
to  brighten  its  joys  by  her  diviner  force  of  feeling — this  is 
the  true  programme  of  true  womanhood,  and  there  is  no 
noble-natured  woman  who  will  not  grant  that  it  is  a  high 
and  noble  ideal. 


Ruskin's  Ideal  of  Women  249 


QUESTIONS  FOR  REVIEW 

1.  What  contrast  does  Ruskin  bring  out  between  Shake- 
speare's heroes  and  his  heroines? 

2.  What  is  his  view  of  the  so-called  superiority  of  one  sex 
over  the  other? 

3.  What  general  traits  does  he  ascribe  to  man  and  what  to 
woman? 

4.  How  does  he  show  the  importance  of  woman's  influence 
in  the  home? 

5.  How  does  he  condemn  the  lack  of  consideration  given 
to  woman's  education? 

6.  What  theories  does  he  hold  as  to  the  nature  of  a  woman's 
education? 

7.  What  dangers  to  womanhood  does  he  fear  from  attempts 
to  "emancipate  "  her? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Prceterita.     Outlines  of  My  Past  Life,    John  Ruskin. 

Complete  Works  of  John  Ruskin.  (Illustrated  Cabinet  Edi- 
tion.) In  26  volumes,  sold  separately  at  $1.50  each.  There  are 
numerous  cheap  editions  of  Sesame  and  Lilies,  Unto  This  Last, 
and  other  of  his  essays. 

Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mill,  and  Other  Literary  Estimates. 
Frederic  Harrison. 


SELECTIONS   FROM  WORDSWORTH 


I  WANDERED  LONELY  AS  A  CLOUD 

Written  at  Town-end,  Grasmere.  The  daffodils  grew  and  still  grow  on 
the  margin  of  Ullswater,  and  probably  may  be  seen  to  this  day  as  beau- 
tiful in  the  month  of  March,  nodding  their  golden  heads  beside  the  dancing 
and  foaming  waves. 

I  wandered  lonely  as  a  cloud 
That  floats  on  high  o'er  vales  and  hills, 

When  all  at  once  I  saw  a  crowd, 
A  host  of  golden  daffodils; 

Beside  the  lake,  beneath  the  trees, 

Fluttering  and  dancing  in  the  breeze. 

Continuous  as  the  stars  that  shine 

And  twinkle  on  the  Milky  Way, 
They  stretched  in  never-ending  line 

Along  the  margin  of  a  bay; 
Ten  thousand  saw  I  at  a  glance, 
Tossing  their  heads  in  sprightly  dance. 

The  waves  beside  them  danced;  but  they 
Out-did  the  sparkling  waves  in  glee: 

A  poet  could  not  but  be  gay, 
In  such  a  jocund  company: 

I  gazed  —  and  gazed  —  but  little  thought 

What  wealth  the  show  to  me  had  brought: 

For  oft,  when  on  my  couch  I  lie 

In  vacant  or  in  pensive  mood, 
They  flash  upon  that  inward  eye, 

Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude; 
And  then  my  heart  with  pleasure  fills, 
And  dances  with  the  daffodils. 

251 


Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 


THE  WORLD'S  RAVAGES 

The  world  is  too  much  with  us:  late  and  soon. 

Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers: 

Little  we  see  in  Nature  that  is  ours; 
We  have  given  our  hearts  away,  a  sordid  boon! 
This  Sea  that  bares  her  bosom  to  the  moon; 

The  winds  that  will  be  howling  at  all  hours, 

And  are  up-gathered  now  like  sleeping  flowers; 
For  this,  for  everything,  we  are  out  of  tune. 
It  moves  us  not. —  Great  God!    I'  d  ratheV  be 

A  pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 

Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn; 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea; 

Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn. 


ODE 

INTIMATIONS   OF    IMMORTALITY   FROM    RECOLLECTIONS   OF 
EARLY    CHILDHOOD 

The  Child  is  father  of  the  Man; 
And  I  could  wish  my  days  to  be 
Bound  each  to  each  by  natural  piety. 

I 

There  was  a  time  when  meadow,  grove,  and  stream, 
The  earth,  and  every  common  sight, 

To  me  did  seem 

Appareled  in  celestial  light, 
The  glory  and  the  freshness  of  a  dream. 
It  is  not  now  as  it  has  been  of  yore;  — 

Turn  wheresoe'er  I  may, 

By  night  or  day, 
The  things  which  I  have  seen  I  now  can  see  no  more. 


Selections  from  Wordsworth  253 

V 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting: 
The  Soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  Star, 

Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 

And  cometh  from  afar: 

Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 

And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 

From  God,  who  is  our  home: 
Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy! 
Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  Boy, 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy; 
The  Youth,  who  daily  farther  from  the  East 

Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  Priest; 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 

Is  on  his  way  attended; 
At  length  the  Man  perceives  it  die  away, 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

VI 

Earth  fills  her  lap  with  pleasure  of  her  own; 
Yearnings  she  hath  in  her  own  natural  kind, 
And  even  with  something  of  a  Mother's  mind, 

And  no  unworthy  aim, 

The  homely  Nurse  doth  all  she  can 
To  make  her  Foster-child,  her  Inmate  Man, 

Forget  the  glories  he  hath  known, 
And  that  imperial  palace  whence  he  came. 

VIII 

Thou,  whose  exterior  semblance  doth  belie 

Thy  Soul's  immensity; 
Thou  best  Philosopher,  yet  who  dost  keep 
Thy  heritage,  thou  Eye  among  the  blind, 
That,  deaf  and  silent,  read'st  the  eternal  deep, 
Haunted  forever  by  the  eternal  mind, — 


254    Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Mighty  Prophet!  Seer  blest! 

On  whom  those  truths  do  rest, 
Which  we  are  toiling  all  our  lives  to  find, 
In  darkness  lost,  the  darkness  of  the  grave; 
Thou,  over  whom  thy  Immortality 
Broods  like  the  Day,  a  Master  o'er  a  Slave, 
A  Presence  which  is  not  to  be  put  by; 
Thou  little  Child,  yet  glorious  in  the  might 
Of  heaven-born  freedom  on  thy  being's  height, 
Why  with  such  earnest  pains  dost  thou  provoke 
The  years  to  bring  the  inevitable  yoke, 
Thus  blindly  with  thy  blessedness  at  strife? 
Full  soon  thy  Soul  shall  have  her  earthly  freight, 
And  custom  lie  upon  thee  with  weight, 
Heavy  as  frost,  and  deep  almost  as  life! 


IX 

O  joy!  that  in  our  embers 

Is  something  that  doth  live, 
That  nature  yet  remembers 

What  was  so  fugitive! 

The  thought  of  our  past  years  in  me  doth  breed 
.  Perpetual  benediction:  not  indeed 
For  that  which  is  most  worthy  to  be  blest' 
Delight  and  liberty,  the  simple  creed 
Of  Childhood,  whether  busy  or  at  rest, 
With  new-fledged  hope  still  fluttering  in  his  breast: 

Not  for  these  I  raise 

The  song  of  thanks  and  praise ; 

But  for  those  obstinate  questionings 

Of  sense  and  outward  things, 

Fallings  from  us,  vanishings; 

Blank  misgivings  of  a  Creature 
Moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized, 
High  instincts  before  which  our  mortal  Nature 
Did  tremble  like  a  guilty  thing  surprised: 


Selections  from  Wordsworth  255 

But  for  those  first  affections, 

Those  shadowy  recollections, 
Which,  be  they  what  they  may, 
Are  yet  the  fountain  light  of  all  our  day, 
Are  yet  a  master  light  of  all  our  seeing; 
Uphold  us,  cherish,  and  have  power  to  make 
Our  noisy  years  seem  moments  in  the  being 
Of  the  eternal  Silence:  truths  that  wake, 

To  perish  never; 
Which  neither  listlessness,  nor  mad  endeavor, 

Nor  Man  nor  Boy. 
Nor  all  that  is  at  enmity  with  joy, 
Can  utterly  abolish  or  destroy! 

Hence  in  a  season  of  calm  weather 

Though  inland  far  we  be, 
Our  Souls  have  sight  of  that  immortal  sea 

Which  brought  us  hither, 

Can  in  a  moment  travel  thither, 
And  see  the  Children  sport  upon  the  shore, 
And  hear  the  mighty  waters  rolling  evermore. 

X 

Then  sing,  ye  Birds,  sing,  sing  a  joyous  song! 

And  let  the  young  Lambs  bound 

As  to  the  tabor's  sound! 
We  in  thought  will  join  your  throng, 

Ye  that  pipe  and  ye  that  play, 

Ye  that  through  your  hearts  to-day 

Feel  the  gladness  of  the  May! 

What  though  the  radiance  which  was  once  so  bright 
Be  now  forever  taken  from  my  sight, 

Though  nothing  can  bring  back  the  hour 
Of  splendor  in  the  grass,  of  glory  in  the  flower; 

We  will  grieve  not,  rather  find 

Strength  in  what  remains  behind; 

In  the  primal  sympathy 

Which  having  been  must  ever  be; 


1$6     Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

In  the  soothing  thoughts  that  spring 
Out  of  human  suffering; 
In  the  faith  that  looks  through  death, 
In  years  that  bring  the  philosophic  mind. 


XI 

And  O,  ye  Fountains,  Meadows,  Hills,  and  Groves, 

Forbode  not  any  severing  of  our  loves! 

Yet  in  my  heart  of  hearts  I  feel  your  might; 

I  only  have  relinquished  one  delight 

To  live  beneath  your  more  habitual  sway. 

I  love  the  Brooks  which  down  their  channels  fret, 

Even  more  than  when  I  tripped  lightly  as  they; 

The  innocent  brightness  of  a  new-born  Day 

Is  lovely  yet; 

The  Clouds  that  gather  round  the  setting  sun 
Do  take  a  sober  coloring  from  an  eye 
That  hath  kept  watch  o'er  man's  mortality; 
Another  race  hath  been,  and  other  palms  are  won. 
Thanks  to  the  human  heart  by  which  we  live, 
Thanks  to  its  tenderness,  its  joys,  and  fears, 
To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears. 


SELECTIONS    FROM    TENNYSON 


CROSSING  THE   BAR 

Sunset  and  evening  star, 

And  one  clear  call  for  me! 
And  may  there  be  no  moaning  of  the  bar, 

When  I  put  out  to  sea. 

But  such  a  tide  as  moving  seems  asleep, 

Too  full  for  sound  and  foam, 
When  that  which  drew  from  out  the  boundless  deep 

Turns  again  home. 

Twilight  and  evening  bell, 

And  after  that  the  dark; 
And  may  there  be  no  sadness  of  farewell, 

When  I  embark. 

For  though  from  out  our  bourne  of  Time  and  Place 

The  flood  may  bear  me  far, 
I  hope  to  see  my  Pilot  face  to  face 

When  I  have  crossed  the  bar. 


PROEM   FROM   IN   MEMORIAM 

Strong  Son  of  God,  immortal  Love, 

Whom  we,  that  have  not  seen  thy  face, 
By  faith,  and  faith  alone,  embrace, 

Believing  where  we  cannot  prove. 

Thine  are  these  orbs  of  light  and  shade; 

Thou  madest  Life  in  man  and  brute; 

Thou  madest  Death;  and  lo,  thy  foot 
Is  on  the  skull  which  thou  hast  made. 

257 


258      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Thou  wilt  not  leave  us  in  the  dust: 

Thou  madest  man,  he  knows  not  why; 
He  thinks  he  was  not  made  to  die; 

And  thou  hast  made  him:  thou  art  just. 

Thou  seemest  human  and  divine, 

The  highest,  holiest  manhood,  thou: 
Our  wills  are  ours,  we  know  not  how; 

Our  wills  are  ours  to  make  them  thine. 

Our  little  systems  have  their  day; 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be: 
They  are  but  broken  lights  of  thee, 

And  thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they. 

We  have  but  faith:  we  cannot  know; 

For  knowledge  is  of  things  we  see; 

And  yet  we  trust  it  comes  from  thee, 
A  beam  in  darkness:  let  it  grow. 

Let  knowledge  grow  from  more  to  more, 
But  more  of  reverence  in  us  dwell: 
That  mind  and  soul,  according  well, 

May  make  one  music  as  before. 

But  vaster.    We  are  fools  and  slight; 
We  mock  thee  when  we  do  not  fear: 
But  help  thy  foolish  ones  to  bear; 

Help  thy  vain  worlds  to  bear  thy  light. 

Forgive  what  seem'd  my  sin  in  me; 

What  seem'd  my  worth  since  I  began; 

For  merit  lives  from  man  to  man, 
And  not  from  man,  O  Lord,  to  thee. 

Forgive  my  grief  for  one  removed, 

Thy  creature,  whom  I  found  so  fair. 
I  trust  he  lives  in  thee,  and  there 

I  find  him  worthier  to  be  loved.     . 


Selections  from  Tennyson  259 

Forgive  these  wild  and  wandering  cries, 

Confusions  of  a  wasted  youth; 

Forgive  them  where  they  fail  in  truth, 
And  in  thy  wisdom  make  me  wise. 


GUINEVERE 

SELECTED  PASSAGES 

But  when  the  Queen  immersed  in  such  a  trance, 
And  moving  thro'  the  past  unconsciously, 
Came  to  that  point  where  first  she  saw  the  King 
Ride  toward  her  from  the  city,  sigh'd  to  find 
Her  journey  done,  glanced  at  him,  thought  him  cold, 
High,  self-contained,  and  passionless,  not  like  him, 
"  Not  like  my  Lancelot"  —  while  she  brooded  thus 
And  grew  half-guilty  in  her  thoughts  again, 
There  rode  an  armed  warrior  to  the  doors. 
A  murmuring  whisper  thro'  the  nunnery  ran, 
Then  on  a  sudden  cry,  "  the  King."     She  sat 
Stiff-stricken,  listening;  but  when  armed  feet 
Thro'  the  long  gallery  from  the  outer  doors 
Rang  coming,  prone  from  off  her  seat  she  fell, 
And  grovell'd  with  her  face  against  the  floor; 
There  with  her  milk-white  arms  and  shadowy  hair 
She  made  her  face  a  darkness  from  the  King; 
And  in  the  darkness  heard  his  armed  feet 
Pause  by  her;  then  came  silence,  then  a  voice, 
Monotonous  and  hollow  like  a  Ghost's 
Denouncing  judgment,  but  tho'  changed,  the  King's 

"  Liest  thou  here  so  low,  the  child  of  one 
I  honor'd,  happy,  dead  before  thy  shame? 
Well  is  it  that  no  child  is  born  of  thee. 
The  children  born  of  thee  are  sword  and  fire, 
Red  ruin,  and  the  breaking  up  of  laws, 
The  craft  of  kindred  and  the  Godless  hosts 
Of  heathen  swarming  o'er  the  Northern  Sea. 


160      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Whom  I,  while  yet  Sir  Lancelot,  my  right  arm, 

The  mightiest  of  my  knights,  abode  with  me, 

Have  everywhere  about  this  land  of  Christ 

In  twelve  great  battles  ruining  overthrown. 

And  knowest  thou  now  from  whence  I  come?  —  from  him, 

From  waging  bitter  war  with  him;  and  he, 

That  did  not  shun  to  smite  me  in  worse  way, 

Had  yet  that  grace  of  courtesy  in  him  left, 

He  spared  to  lift  his  hand  against  the  King 

Who  made  him  knight:  but  many  a  knight  was  slain; 

And  many  more,  and  all  his  kith  and  kin 

Clave  to  him,  and  abode  in  his  own  land. 

And  many  more  when  Modred  raised  revolt, 

Forgetful  of  their  troth  and  fealty,  clave 

To  Modred,  and  a  remnant  stays  with  me. 

And  of  this  remnant  will  I  leave  a  part, 

True  men  who  love  me  still,  for  whom  I  live, 

To  guard  thee  in  the  wild  hour  coming  on, 

Lest  but  a  hair  of  this  low  head  be  harm'd. 

Fear  not:  thou  shalt  be  guarded  till  my  death. 

Howbeit  I  know,  if  ancient  prophecies 

Have  erred  not,  that  I  march  to  meet  my  doom. 

Thou  hast  not  made  my  life  so  sweet  to  me, 

That  I  the  King  should  greatly  care  to  live; 

For  thou  has  spoilt  the  purpose  of  my  life. 

Bear  with  me  for  the  last  time  while  I  show, 

E'en  for  thy  sake,  the  sin  which  thou  hast  sinned. 

For  when  the  Roman  left  us,  and  their  law 

Relax'd  its  hold  upon  us,  and  the  ways 

Were  fill'd  with  rapine,  here  and  there  a  deed 

Of  prowess  done  redress'd  a  random  wrong. 

But  I  was  first  of  all  the  kings  who  drew 

The  knighthood-errant  of  this  realm  and  all 

The  realms  together  under  me,  their  head, 

In  that  fair  order  of  my  Table  Round, 

A  glorious  company,  the  flower  of  men, 

To  serve  as  model  for  the  mighty  world, 

And  be  the  fair  beginning  of  a  time. 


Selections  from  Tennyson  261 

I  made  them  lay  their  hands  in  mine  and  swear 

To  reverence  the  King,  as  if  he  were 

Their  conscience,  and  their  conscience  as  their  King, 

To  break  the  heathen  and  uphold  the  Christ, 

To  ride  abroad  redressing  human  wrongs, 

To  speak  no  slander,  no,  nor  listen  to  it, 

To  lead  sweet  lives  in  purest  chastity, 

To  love  one  maiden  only,  cleave  to  her 

And  worship  her  by  years  of  noble  deeds, 

Until  they  won  her;  for  indeed  I  knew 

Of  no  more  subtle  master  under  heaven 

Than  is  the  maiden  passion  for  a  maid, 

Not  only  to  keep  down  the  base  in  man, 

But  teach  high  thought  and  amiable  words, 

And  courtliness,  and  the  desire  of  fame, 

And  love  of  truth,  and  all  that  makes  a  man. 

And  all  this  throve  until  I  wedded  thee, 

Believing,  "  lo,  mine  helpmate,  one  to  feel 

My  purpose  and  rejoicing  in  my  joy." 

Then  came  thy  shameful  sin  with  Lancelot; 

Then  came  the  sin  of  Tristram  and  Isolt; 

Then  others,  following  these  my  mightiest  knights, 

And  drawing  foul  ensample  from  fair  names, 

Sinn'd  also,  till  the  loathsome  opposite 

Of  all  my  heart  had  destined  did  obtain, 

And  all  thro'  thee!  so  that  this  life  of  mine 

I  guard  as  God's  high  gift  from  scathe  and  wrong, 

Not  greatly  care  to  lose;  but  rather  think 

How  sad  it  were  for  Arthur,  should  he  live, 

To  sit  once  more  within  his  lonely  hall, 

And  miss  the  wonted  number  of  my  knights, 

And  miss  to  hear  high  talk  of  noble  deeds 

As  in  the  golden  days  before  thy  sin. 

For  which  of  us,  who  might  be  left,  could  speak 

Of  the  pure  heart,  nor  seem  to  glance  at  thee? 

And  in  thy  bowers  of  Camelot  or  of  Usk 

Thy  shadow  still  would  glide  from  room  to  room, 

And  I  should  evermore  be  vext  with  thee 


262      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

In  hanging  robe  or  vacant  ornament, 

Or  ghostly  footfall  echoing  on  the  stair. 

For  think  not,  tho'  thou  wouldst  not  love  thy  lord, 

Thy  lord  has  wholly  lost  his  love  for  thee. 

I  am  not  made  of  so  slight  elements. 

Yet  I  must  leave  thee,  woman,  to  thy  shame." 


He  paused,  and  in  the  pause  she  crept  an  inch 
Nearer,  and  laid  her  hands  about  his  feet. 
Far  off  a  solitary  trumpet  blew. 
Then  waiting  by  the  doors  the  war  horse  neigh'd 
As  at  a  friend's  voice,  and  he  spake  again. 

"  Yet  think  not  that  I  come  to  urge  thy  crimes, 

I  did  not  come  to  curse  thee,  Guinevere, 

I,  whose  vast  pity  almost  makes  me  die 

To  see  thee,  laying  there  thy  golden  head, 

My  pride  in  happier  summers,  at  my  feet. 

The  wrath  which  forced  my  thoughts  on  that  fierce  law, 

The  doom  of  treason  and  of  flaming  death, 

(When  first  I  learnt  thee  hidden  here)  is  past. 

The  pang — which  while  I  weighed  thy  heart  with  one 

Too  wholly  true  to  dream  untruth  in  thee, 

Made  my  tears  burn — is  also  past,  in  part, 

And  all  is  past,  the  sin  is  sinn'd,  and  I, 

Lo  !  I  forgive  thee,  as  Eternal  God 

Forgives:  do  thou  for  thine  own  soul  the  rest. 

But  how  to  take  last  leave  of  all  I  loved? 

0  golden  hair  with  which  I  used  to  play 
Not  knowing  !     O  imperial  moulded  form, 
And  beauty  such  as  never  woman  wore, 
Until  it  came  a  kingdom's  curse  with  thee — 

1  cannot  touch  thy  lips,  they  are  not  mine, 

But  Lancelot's:  nay,  they  never  were  the  King's. 
I  cannot  take  thy  hand;  that,  too,  is  flesh. 
And  in  the  flesh  thou  hast  sinn'd;  and  mine  own  flesh, 
Here  looking  down  on  thee  polluted,  cries 


Selections  from  Tennyson  263 

"I  loathe  thee":  yet  not  less,  O  Guinevere, 
For  I  was  ever  virgin  save  for  thee, 
My  love  thro'  flesh  hath  wrought  into  my  life 
So  far,  that  my  doom  is,  I  love  thee  still. 
Let  no  man  dream  but  that  I  love  thee  still. 
Perchance,  and  so  thou  purify  thy  soul, 
And  so  thou  lean  on  our  fair  father  Christ, 
Hereafter  in  that  world  where  all  are  pure 
We  two  may  meet  before  high  God,  and  thou 
Wilt  spring  to  me  and  claim  me  thine,  and  know 
I  am  thine  husband — not  a  smaller  soul, 
Nor  Lancelot,  nor  another.     Leave  me  that, 
I  charge  thee,  my  last  hope.     Now  must  I  hence. 
Thro'  the  thick  night  I  hear  the  trumpet  blow: 
They  summon  me  their  King  to  lead  mine  hosts 
Far  down  to  that  great  battle  in  the  west, 
Where  I  must  strike  against  the  man  they  call 
My  sister's  son — no  kin  of  mine,  who  leagues 
With  lords  of  the  White  Horse,  heathen,  and  knights- 
Traitors — and  strike  him  dead,  and  meet  myself 
Death,  or  I  know  not  what  mysterious  doom. 
And  thou  remaining  here  wilt  learn  the  event; 
But  hither  shall  I  never  come  again, 
Never  lie  by  thy  side,  see  thee  no  more, 
Farewell!" 

And  while  she  grovell'd  at  his  feet, 
She  felt  the  King's  breath  wander  o'er  her  neck, 
And  in  the  darkness  o'er  her  fallen  head, 
Perceived  the  waving  of  his  hands  that  blest. 


SELECTIONS   FROM    BROWNING 


THE  PATRIOT 

AN   OLD    STORY 

It  was  roses,  roses,  all  the  way, 
With  myrtle  mixed  in  my  path  like  mad: 

The  house-roofs  seemed  to  heave  and  sway, 
The  church-spires  flamed,  such  flags  they  had, 

A  year  ago  on  this  very  day. 

The  air  broke  into  a  mist  with  bells, 

The  old  walls  rocked  with  the  crowd  and  cries. 
Had  I  said,  "  Good  folk,  mere  noise  repels  — 

But  give  me  your  sun  from  yonder  skies! " 
They  had  answered,  "And  afterward,  what  else? ' 

Alack,  it  was  I  who  leaped  at  the  sun 
To  give  it  my  loving  friends  to  keep! 

Naught  man  could  do,  have  I  left  undone: 
And  you  see  my  harvest,  what  I  reap 

This  very  day,  now  a  year  has  run. 

There  's  nobody  on  the  housetops  now  — 
Just  a  palsied  few  at  the  window  set; 

For  the  best  of  the  sight  is,  all  allow, 
At  the  Shambles'  Gate  —  or,  better  yet, 

By  the  very  scaffold's  foot,  I  trow. 

I  go  in  the  rain,  and,  more  than  needs, 
A  rope  cuts  both  my  wrists  behind; 

And  I  think,  by  the  feel,  my  forehead  bleeds, 
For  they  fling,  whoever  has  a  mind, 

Stones  at  me  for  my  year's  misdeeds. 
264 


Selections  from  Browning  265 

Thus  I  entered,  and  thus  I  go! 

In  triumphs  people  have  dropped  down  dead. 
"  Paid  by  the  world,  what  dost  thou  owe 

Me?" — God  might  question;  now  instead, 
'T  is  God  shall  repay:  I  am  safer  so. 


PROSPICE 

This  poem  was  written  in  the  autumn  following  Mrs.  Browning's  death. 

Fear  death?  —  to  feel  the  fog  in  my  throat, 

The  mist  in  my  face, 
When  the  snows  begin,  and  the  blasts  denote 

I  arn  nearing  the  place, 
The  power  of  the  night,  the  press  of  the  storm, 

The  post  of  the  foe; 
Where  he  stands,  the  Arch  Fear  in  a  visible  form, 

Yet  the  strong  man  must  go: 
For  the  journey  is  done  and  the  summit  attained, 

And  the  barriers  fall, 
Though  a  battle  's  to  fight  ere  the  guerdon  be  gained, 

The  reward  of  it  all. 
I  was  ever  a  fighter,  so  —  one  fight  more, 

The  best  and  the  last! 
I  would  hate  that  death  bandaged  my  eyes,  and  forbore, 

And  bade  me  creep  past. 
No!  let  me  taste  the  whole  of  it,  fare  like  my  peers, 

The  heroes  of  old, 
Bear  the  brunt,  in  a  minute  pay  glad  life's  arrears 

Of  pain,  darkness  and  cold. 
For  sudden  the  worst  turns  the  best  to  the  brave, 

The  black  minute 's  at  end, 
And  the  elements'  rage,  the  fiend-voices  that  rave, 

Shall  dwindle,  shall  blend, 
Shall  change,  shall  become  first  a  peace  out  of  pain, 

Then  a  light,  then  thy  breast, 
O  thou  soul  of  my  soul!  I  shall  clasp  thee  again, 

And  with  God  be  the  rest! 


266       Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 


ONE  WAY  OF  LOVE 

All  June  I  bound  the  rose  in  sheaves. 

Now,  rose  by  rose,  I  strip  the  leaves, 

And  strew  them  where  Pauline  may  pass. 

She  will  not  turn  aside?     Alas! 

Let  them  lie.    Suppose  they  die? 

The  chance  was  they  might  take  her  eye. 

How  many  a  month  I  strove  to  suit 
These  stubborn  fingers  to  the  lute! 
To-day  I  venture  all  I  know. 
She  will  not  hear  my  music?     So! 
Break  the  string;  fold  music's  wing: 
Suppose  Pauline  had  bade  me  sing! 

My  whole  life  long  I  learned  to  love. 
This  hour  my  utmost  art  I  prove, 
And  speak  my  passion  —  heaven  or  hell? 
She  will  not  give  me  heaven?     'T  is  well! 
Lose  who  may  —  I  still  can  say, 
Those  who  win  heaven,  blest  are  they! 


MEETING  AT   NIGHT 

The  gray  sea  and  the  long  black  land; 
And  the  yellow  half-moon  large  and  low; 

And  the  startled  little  waves  that  leap 

In  fiery  ringlets  from  their  sleep, 
As  I  gain  the  cove  with  pushing  prow, 
And  quench  its  speed  in  the  slushy  sand. 

Then  mile  of  warm  sea-scented  beach; 

Three  fields  to  cross  till  a  farm  appears; 
A  tap  at  the  pane,  the  quick  sharp  scratch 
And  the  blue  spurt  of  a  lighted  match, 

And  a  voice  less  loud,  through  its  joys  and  fears, 

Than  the  two  hearts  beating  each  to  each! 


Selections  from  Browning  267 


PARTING   AT   MORNING 

Round  the  cape  of  a  sudden  came  the  sea, 
And  the  sun  looked  over  the  mountain's  rim: 
And  straight  was  a  path  of  gold  for  him, 
And  the  need  of  a  world  of  men  for  me. 


CHRISTMAS-EVE 

SELECTED   PASSAGES 

For  lo,  what  think  you?     Suddenly 

The  rain  and  the  wind  ceased,  and  the  sky 

Received  at  once  the  full  fruition 

Of  the  moon's  consummate  apparition. 

The  black  cloud-barricade  was  riven, 

Ruined  beneath  her  feet,  and  driven 

Deep  in  the  West;  while  bare  and  breathless, 

North  and  South  and  East  lay  ready 

For  a  glorious  thing  that,  dauntless,  deathless, 

Sprang  across  them  and  stood  steady. 

'Twas  a  moon-rainbow,  vast  and  perfect, 

From  heaven  to  heaven  extending,  perfect 

As  the  mother-moon's  self,  full  in  face. 

It  rose,  distinctly  at  the  base 

With  its  seven  proper  colors  chorded, 

Which  still,  in  the  rising,  were  compressed, 

Until  at  last  they  coalesced, 

And  supreme  the  spectral  creature  lorded 

In  a  triumph  of  whitest  white,  — - 

Above  which  intervened  the  night. 

But  above  night,  too,  like  only  the  next, 

The  second  of  a  wondrous  sequence, 

Reaching  in  rare  and  rarer  frequence, 

Till  the  heaven  of  heavens  were  circumflexed, 

Another  rainbow  rose,  a  mightier, 

Fainter,  flushier,  and  flightier, — 

Rapture  dying  along  its  verge. 


268      Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

Oh,  whose  foot  shall  I  see  emerge, 
Whose,  from  the  straining  topmost  dark, 
On  to  the  keystone  of  that  arc? 


All  at  once  I  looked  up  with  terror. 

He  was  there. 

He  himself  with  his  human  air, 

On  the  narrow  pathway,  just  before. 

I  saw  the  back  of  him,  no  more  — 

He  had  left  the  chapel,  then,  as  I. 

I  forgot  all  about  the  sky. 

No  face:  only  the  sight 

Of  a  sweepy  garment,  vast  and  white, 

With  a  hem  that  I  could  recognize. 

I  felt  terror,  no  surprise; 

My  mind  filled  with  the  cataract 

At  one  bound  of  the  mighty  fact. 

"  I  remember,  he  did  say 

Doubtless  that,  to  this  world's  end, 

Where  two  or  three  should  meet  and  pray, 

He  would  be  in  the  midst,  their  friend; 

Certainly  he  was  there  with  them!" 

And  my  pulses  leaped  for  joy 

Of  the  golden  thought  without  alloy, 

That  I  saw  his  very  vesture's  hem. 

Then  rushed  the  blood  back,  cold  and  clear, 

With  a  fresh  enhancing  shiver  of  fear; 

And  I  hastened,  cried  out  while  I  pressed 

To  the  salvation  of  the  vest; 

"But  not  so,  Lord!     It  cannot  be 

That  thou,  indeed,  art  leaving  me  — 

Me,  that  have  despised  thy  friends! 

Did  my  heart  make  no  amends? 

Thou  art  the  love  of  God  —  above 

His  power,  didst  hear  me  place  his  love, 

And  that  was  leaving  the  world  for  thee. 

Therefore  thou  must  not  turn  from  me 

As  I  had  chosen  the  other  part! 


Selections  from  Browning  269 

Folly  and  pride  o'ercame  my  heart. 
Our  best  is  bad,  nor  bears  thy  test; 
Still,  it  should  be  our  very  best. 
I  thought  it  best  that  thou,  the  spirit, 
Be  worshiped  in  spirit  and  in  truth, 
And  in  beauty,  as  even  we  require  it  — 
Not  in  the  forms  burlesque,  uncouth, 
I  left  but  now,  as  scarcely  fitted 
For  thee:    I  knew  not  what  I  pitied. 
But  all  I  felt  there,  right  or  wrong, 
What  is  it  to  thee,  who  curest  sinning? 
Am  I  not  weak  as  thou  art  strong? 
I  have  looked  to  thee  from  the  beginning, 
Straight  up  to  thee  through  all  the  world 
Which,  like  an  idle  scroll,  lay  furled 
To  nothingness  on  either  side: 
And  since  the  time  thou  wast  descried, 
Spite  of  the  weak  heart,  so  have  I 
Lived  ever,  and  so  fain  would  die, 
Living  and  dying,  thee  before! 
But  if  thou  leavest  me" 

Less  or  more, 

I  suppose  that  I  spoke  thus. 
When,  —  have  mercy,  Lord,  on  us! 
The  whole  face  turned  upon  me  full. 
And  I  spread  myself  beneath  it, 
As  when  the  bleacher  spreads,  to  seethe  it 
In  the  cleansing  sun,  his  wool,— 
Steeps  in  the  flood  of  noontide  whiteness 
Some  defiled,  discolored  web  — 
So  lay  I,  saturate  with  brightness. 


SELECTIONS    FROM    RUSKIN 


FROM   "THE   STUDY   OF   ARCHITECTURE" 

There  is  a  noble  way  of  carving  a  man,  and  a  mean  one; 
and  there  is  a  noble  way  of  carving  a  beetle,  and  a  mean  one; 
and  a  great  sculptor  carves  his  scarabaeus  grandly,  as  he  carves 
his  king,  while  a  mean  sculptor  makes  vermin  of  both.  And  it 
is  a  sorrowful  truth,  yet  a  sublime  one,  that  this  greatness  of 
treatment  cannot  be  taught  by  talking  about  it.  No,  nor  even 
by  enforced  imitative  practise  of  it.  Men  treat  their  subjects 
nobly  only  when  they  themselves  become  noble;  not  till  then. 
And  that  elevation  of  their  own  nature  is  assuredly  not  to  be 
effected  by  a  course  of  drawing  from  models,  however  well 
chosen,  or  of  listening  to  lectures,  however  well  intended. 

All  lovely  architecture  was  designed  for 

cities  in  cloudless  air;  for  cities  in  which  piazzas  and  gar- 
dens opened  in  bright  populousness  and  peace;  cities  built  that 
men  might  live  happily  in  them,  and  take  delight  daily  in  each 
other's  presence  and  powers.  But  our  cities,  built  in  black  air, 
which,  by  its  accumulated  foulness,  first  renders  all  ornament 
invisible  in  distance,  and  then  chokes  its  interstices  with  soot; 
cities  which  are  mere  crowded  masses  of  store  and  warehouse, 
and  counter,  and  are  therefore  to  the  rest  of  the  world  what 
the  larder  and  cellar  are  to  a  private  house;  cities  in  which  the 
object  of  men  is  not  life,  but  labor;  and  in  which  all  chief  mag- 
nitude of  edifice  is  to  enclose  machinery;  cities  in  which  the 
streets  are  not  the  avenues  for  the  passing  and  procession  of  a 
happy  people,  but  the  drains  for  the  discharge  of  a  tormented 
mob,  in  which  the  only  object  in  reaching  any  spot  is  to  be 
transferred  to  another;  in  which  existence  becomes  mere 
transition,  and  every  creature  is  only  one  atom  in  a  drift  of 
human  dust,  and  current  of  interchanging  particles,  circulating 

270 


Selections  from  Ruskin  271 

here  by  tunnels  underground,  and  there  by  tubes  in  the  air;  for 
a  city,  or  cities,  such  as  this,  no  architecture  is  possible  — nay, 
no  desire  of  it  is  possible  to  their  inhabitants. 

One  of  the  most  singular  proofs  of  the  vanity  of  all  hope 
that  conditions  of  art  may  be  combined  with  the  occupations 
of  such  a  city,  has  been  given  lately  in  the  design  of  the  new 
iron  bridge  over  the  Thames  at  Blackfriars.  Distinct  attempt 
has  been  there  made  to  obtain  architectural  effect  on  a  grand 
scale.  Nor  was  there  anything  in  the  nature  of  the  work  to 
prevent  such  an  effort  being  successful.  It  is  not  an  edifice's 
being  of  iron,  or  of  glass,  or  thrown  into  new  forms,  demanded 
by  new  purposes,  which  need  hinder  its  being  beautiful.  But 
it  is  the  absence  of  all  desire  of  beauty,  of  all  joy  in  fancy,  and 
of  all  freedom  in  thought.  If  a  Greek,  or  Egyptian,  or  Gothic 
architect  had  been  required  to  design  such  a  bridge,  he  would 
have  looked  instantly  at  the  main  conditions  of  its  structure, 
and  dwelt  on  them  with  the  delight  of  imagination.  He  would 
have  seen  that  the  main  thing  to  be  done  was  to  hold  a  hori- 
zontal group  of  iron  rods  steadily  and  straight  over  stone  piers. 
Then  he  would  have  said  to  himself  (or  felt  without  saying), 
"  It  is  this  holding  —  this  grasp  —  this  securing  tenor  of  a  thing 
which  might  be  shaken,  on  which  I  have  to  insist."  And  he 
would  have  put  some  life  into  those  iron  tenons.  As  a  Greek 
put  human  life  into  his  pillars  and  produced  the  caryatid,  and 
an  Egyptian  lotus-life  into  his  pillars  and  produced  the  lily 
capital,  so  here,  either  of  them  would  have  put  some  gigantic 
or  angelic  life  into  those  colossal  sockets.  He  would  perhaps 
have  put  vast  winged  statues  of  bronze,  folding  their  wings,  and 
grasping  <he  iron  rails  with  their  hands;  or  monstrous  eagles, 
or  serpents  holding  with  claw  or  coH,  or  strong,  four-footed  ani- 
mals couchant,  holding  with  the  paw,  or  in  fierce  action, 
holding  with  teeth.  Thousands  of  grotesque  or  of  lovely 
thoughts  would  have  risen  before  him,  and  the  bronze  forms, 
animal  or  human,  would  have  signified,  either  in  symbol  or  in 
legend,  whatever  might  be  gracefully  told  respecting  the  pur- 
poses of  the  work  and  the  districts  to  which  it  conducted. 
Whereas,  now,  the  entire  invention  of  the  designer  seems  to 
have  exhausted  itself  in  exaggerating  to  an  enormous  size  a 


Literary  Leaders  of  Modern  England 

weak  form  of  iron  nut,  and  in  conveying  the  information  upon 
it,  in  large  letters,  that  it  belongs  to  the  London,  Chatham,  and 
Dover  Railway  Company. 


FROM   "UNTO  THIS   LAST" 

"THE   VEINS   OF  WEALTH" 

It  has  been  shown  that  the  chief  value  and  virtue  of  money 
consists  in  its  having  power  over  human  beings;  that  without 
this  power,  large  material  possessions  are  useless,  and  to  any 
person  possessing  such  power,  comparatively  unnecessary.  But 
power  over  human  beings  is  attainable  by  other  means  than 
by  money.  As  I  said  a  few  pages  back,  the  money  power  is 
always  imperfect  and  doubtful;  there  are  many  things  that 
cannot  be  retained  by  it.  Many  joys  may  be  given  to  men 
which  cannot  be  bought  for  gold,  and  many  fidelities  found  in 
them  which  cannot  be  rewarded  by  it. 

Trite  enough  —  the  reader  thinks.  Yes:  but  it  is  not  so 
trite  —  I  wish  it  were  —  that  in  this  moral  power,  quite  inscrut- 
able and  immeasurable  though  it  be,  there  is  a  monetary  value 
just  as  real  as  that  represented  by  more  ponderous  currencies. 
A  man's  hand  may  be  full  of  invisible  gold,  and  the  wave  of  it, 
or  the  grasp  of  it  shall  do  more  than  another's  with  a  shower 
of  bullion.  This  invisible  gold,  also,  does  not  necessarily  di- 
minish in  spending.  Political  economists  will  do  well  someday 

to  take  heed  of  it,  though  they  cannot  take  measure 

Finally.  Since  the  essence  of  wealth  consists  in  power  over 
men,  will  it  not  follow  that  the  nobler  and  the  more  in  num- 
ber the  persons  are  over  whom  it  has  power,  the  greater  the 
wealth?  Perhaps  it  may  even  appear  after  some  consideration, 
that  the  persons  themselves  are  the  wealth  —  that  these  pieces 
of  gold  with  which  we  are  in  the  habit  of  guiding  them,  are,  in 
fact,  nothing  more  than  a  kind  of  Byzantine  harness  or  trap- 
pings, very  glittering  and  beautiful  in  barbaric  sight,  wherewith 
we  bridle  the  creatures;  but  that  if  these  same  living  creatures 
could  be  guided  without  the  fretting  and  jingling  of  the  Byzants 
in  their  mouths  and  ears,  they  might  themselves  be  more  valu- 
able than  their  bridles.  In  fact,  it  may  be  discovered  that  the 


Selections  from  Ruskin  273 

true  veins  of  wealth  are  purple  —  and  not  in  Rock,  but  in 
Flesh —  perhaps  even  that  the  final  outcome  and  consummation 
of  all  wealth  is  in  the  producing  as  many  as  possible  full- 
breathed,  bright-eyed,  and  happy-hearted  human  creatures. 
Nay,  in  some  far-away  and  undreamt-of  hour, 
I  can  even  imagine  that  England  may  cast  all  thoughts 
of  possessive  wealth  back  to  the  barbaric  nations  among  whom 
they  first  arose;  and  that,  while  the  sands  of  the  Indus  and 
adamant  of  Golconda  may  yet  stiffen  the  housings  of  the 
charger,  and  flash  from  the  turban  of  the  slave,  she,  as  a  Chris- 
tian mother,  may  at  last  attain  to  the  virtues  and  the  treasures 
of  a  heathen  one,  and  be  able  to  lead  forth  her  sons,  saying  — 
"  These  are  my  Jewels." 


SELECTION   FROM  CARLYLE 


FROM  "PAST  AND   PRESENT" 

For  there  is  a  perennial  nobleness,  and  even  sacredness,  in 
Work.  Were  he  never  so  benighted,  forgetful  of  his  high 
calling,  there  is  always  hope  in  a  man  that  actually  and  ear- 
nestly works;  in  Idleness  alone  is  there'  perpetual  despair. 
Work,  never  so  Mammonish,  mean,  is  in  communication  with 
Nature;  the  real  desire  to  get  Work  done  will  itself  lead  one 
more  and  more  to  truth,  to  Nature's  appointments  and  regula- 
tions, which  are  truth.  The  latest  Gospel  in  this  world  is, 
Know  thy  work  and  do  it.  "  Know  thyself":  long  enough  has 
that  poor  "self"  of  thine  tormented  thee;  thou  wilt  never  get 
to  "know  "it  I  believe!  Think  it  not  thy  business,  this  of 
knowing  thyself ;  thou  art  an  unknowable  individual:  Know 
what  thou  canst  work  at;  and  work  at  it  like  a  Hercules  !  That 
will  be  thy  better  plan. 

It  has  been  written,  "An  endless  significance  lies  in  work"; 
a  man  perfects  himself  by  working.  Foul  jungles  are  cleared 
away,  fair  seed  fields  rise  instead,  and  stately  cities;  and  withal, 
the  man  himself  first  ceases  to  be  jungle  and  foul  unwhole- 
some desert  thereby.  Consider  how,  even  in  the  meanest  sorts 
of  Labor,  the  whole  soul  of  a  man  is  composed  into  a  kind  of 
real  harmony,  the  instant  he  sets  himself  to  work  !  Doubt,  De- 
sire, Sorrow,  Remorse,  Indignation,  Despair  itself,  all  these 
like  hell-dogs  lie  beleaguering  the  soul  of  the  poor  day-worker, 
as  of  every  man;  but  he  bends  himself  with  free  valor  against 
his  task,  and  all  these  are  stilled,  all  these  shrink  murmuring 
far  off  into  their  caves.  The  man  is  now  a  man.  The  blessed 
glow  of  Labor  in  him,  is  it  not  as  a  purifying  fire,  wherein  all 
poison  is  burnt  up,  and  of  sour  smoke  itself  there  is  made 
bright  blessed  flame  ?  Labor  is  life:  from  the 

274 


Selection  from  Carlyle  275 

inmost  heart  of  the  worker  rises  his  God-given  Force,  the  sa- 
cred, celestial  Life — essence  breathed  into  him  by  Almighty 
God;  from  his  inmost  heart  awakens  him  to  all  nobleness — to 
all  knowledge,  "  self-knowledge,"  and  much  else,  so  soon  as 
work  fitly  begins.  Knowledge  ?  The  knowledge  that  will  hold 
good  in  working,  cleave  thou  to  that;  for  Nature  herself  ac- 
credits that,  says  yea  to  that.  Properly  thou  hast  no  other 
knowledge  but  what  thou  hast  got  by  working:  the  rest  is  yet 
all  a  hypothesis  of  knowledge;  a  thing  to  be  argued  of  in 
schools,  a  thing  floating  in  the  clouds,  in  endless  logic-vortices, 
till  we  try  it  and  fix  it.  "  Doubt,  of  whatever  kind,  can  be  end- 
ed by  Action  alone." 


A     001  110897     4 


